With yesterday's appointment of Nate Davis to serve as the XM Satellite Radio President and Chief Operating Officer, we now have learned more about the situation from XM's latest 8-K filing (PDF).

First off, as we know from the announcement yesterday - Nate Davis, 52, is a member of XM's Board of Directors, and he will remain on there. That gives Mr. Davis a bit more clout than any ol' President/COO. Hugh Panero, and Gary Parsons will continue as CEO and Chairman of the Board respectively, so there is no change in that sense.

As for changes in the Board, member Jeffrey Zients has replaced Mr. Davis on the Audit Committee and existing Audit Committee member Eddy Hartenstein has taken over as chair of the Audit Committee. Board member George Haywood has replaced Mr. Davis on the Nominating Committee.

Nate Davis will receive a base salary of $500,000 for the first year of the agreement, with increases to $550,000 and $600,000, in the first and second year respectively. Mr. Davis will receive a one-time signing bonus consisting of $150,000 and 20,000 shares of stock.

Mr. Davis will supervise marketing for both retail and OEM, product development, customer service, and finance. While Hugh Panero will directly oversee programming, sales and business affairs. No doubt this will be a topic of discussion on Thursday's conference call, so let's see what else we will find out.

XM Satellite Radio and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP), have entered into a new five-year music licensing agreement. The ASCAP was established in 1914 and is the world's largest performing rights organization with over 130,000 composer, lyricist and music publisher members.

The agreement provides for XM Satellite Radio to pay licensing fees (royalties) to ASCAP for the public performance of copyrighted musical compositions in the Society's repertory of over seven million works.

"XM is pleased to renew our agreement, which compensates ASCAP's composers and lyricists for their important contributions," said Eric Logan, Executive Vice President of Programming at XM Satellite Radio.  "We look forward to continuing our productive and mutually beneficial relationship with ASCAP and its members."

XM Satellite Radio, today announced the appointment of Nate Davis to the newly created position of President and Chief Operating Officer.

Nate Davis is a seasoned telecommunications executive, having served in senior management roles at XO Communications, Nextel and MCI. He was President and COO of XO Communications from late 1999 through early 2003. During his tenure, XO became a $1.38 billion integrated communications provider offering voice, data, internet access, and web hosting services to all segments of the business market.

At Nextel Communications, Davis was the Executive Vice President of all technical operations which included engineering, operations, procurement, and IT. Davis also served as CFO of MCI Telecommunications, President and COO of MCImetro, and in a host of roles at MCI and AT&T earlier in his career. He most recently served as Executive In Residence at the venture capital firm Columbia Capital. In addition to continuing as a member of XM's Board of Directors, Davis serves on the boards of Mutual of America Capital Management Corporation and Charter Communications.

Davis received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, his Masters in Engineering Computer Science at the Moore School at Penn, and a Bachelors of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

In a refreshing change from the "XM vs SIRIUS" discussion you usually see in media outlets, CNN today has a piece on the benefits of the services from the eyes of two subscribers. There's no arguing or name calling, just a very personable way of highlighting how both XM and SIRIUS are unique - from each other, and especially from terrestrial radio.

Read the article from the eyes of a terrestrial radio listener. See how many items you can count in the "favorite channels" question that aren't available on AM/FM.

[CNN.com] 

The Washington Post today featured an incredibly accurate column on the RIAA's lawsuit against XM. This paragraph says it all:

You'd think an industry that has managed to turn out so much mediocre music for so many years, done so much to lower moral standards and lost so much business to illegal file-sharing would have something better to do than attack some of the few distributors that are actually expanding the market and charging for music. But the prospect that the industry might not extract every last penny out of the new satellite radio services and their customers is simply unacceptable to the Recording Industry Association of America.

(cue slow clap)

Satellite Radio is the only media outlet that actually gives less "popular" music genres a chance to be heard in the car (where a majority of radio listening - and music discovery - occurs). In NYC, you can't find a single Country Music station. In my area, there isn't a single decent Jazz station in sight (sorry, "Blues" does not equal "Jazz"). The Satellite Radio Industry gives these genres airtime, which ultimately leads to increase sales (something the RIAA is complaining they're losing out on).

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

[more on the Washington Post]