SiriusXM’s potential acquisition of Stitcher could give it the pieces it needs it then needs to figure out how to put those pieces together.

Meanwhile, SiriusXM has scale but it needs a coherent podcast strategy to compete with iHeart and Spotify. In general, Stitcher needs scale to avoid getting lost as the podcast industry grows, a fate that befell various early digital music pioneers such as eMusic (which predated iTunes for paid music downloads by five years) and Rhapsody (which predated Spotify for interactive streaming by six). Some of SiriusXM’s broadcast shows-which have tens of millions of listeners-could be made into podcasts the same way as iHeartMedia and NPR have done with theirs. SiriusXM already has a significant presence in podcasting through its ownership of Pandora, which has become a popular podcast app in its own right, and its acquisition, just last month, of the podcast publishing tool Simplecast. Yet SiriusXM could open up a completely different future for Stitcher and its components. Two years ago, Pandora launched a classification and recommendation engine for podcasts that’s analogous to its groundbreaking Music Genome Project for music. And as for discovery and recommendations, the “Pandora for podcasts” is now. Paid subscriptions to podcasts haven’t taken off yet and may never become more than a niche business, at least in the U.S.

As a podcast app, Stitcher had been, by some measures, the only one with double-digit market share besides Apple Podcasts, but now Spotify has that distinction. Midroll’s ad sales capabilities have gotten competition from technology-based startups such as Acast, but especially from iHeartMedia with its enormous ad sales force from broadcast radio. But as the podcasting audience reached mainstream levels, Stitcher didn’t reach leadership positions in any of these models. In other words, Stitcher was early in implementing most of the models that are emerging for podcasting as it becomes a more mature business. Top Ten Most Annoying Corporate Jargon Phrases

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