Isn't that what buffering is for?

Surely the average data plan could handle ~300kbps streaming with enough of an overhead such that buffering would make interruptions extremely unlikely?

I'd take that over having noticeably degraded sound quality almost all the time with radio.

Satellite radio does sound quite a bit worse than any recorded medium you can buy today. The difference isn't due to errors, but overcompression. That's not a problem with 128K or better AAC streams, or 192K MP3 streams for that matter, yet Young apparently isn't objecting to having his songs played on SiriusXM.

So: yeah, it's safe to say it's all about marketing his snake oil.

This is what buffering is for