There's nothing new in this piece about the challenges facing satellite radio in a Slacker-ized, Pandora-ted world that you haven't been reading in this blog for years.
It is telling, however, that while Sirius XM owns the "satellite rights" to Major League Baseball, they don't own the streaming rights, thus the same forces that convinced Federal regulators that Sirius and XM could merge because they were part of a larger market are conspiring to demonstrate to Sirius XM just how small their corner of that market really is.
Says the article:
On Mar. 30, MLB will release an iPhone (AAPL) mobile application that will stream games live from all 30 teams—which is what Sirius customers get now—and offer video clips and live score updates for $10 for the entire season. Sirius' subscriptions that include MLB games start at $10 a month. The new app doesn't violate baseball's contract with Sirius XM, which covers rights to stream games only on satellite radio.
Being a content owner – not a licensee (and especially not a licensee for one single distribution channel of content) – is becoming more important than ever.
If I'm Howard Stern, the world is my oyster.