Sirius Satellite Radio is a satellite radio (SDARS) service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Radio.

Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially launched on July 1, 2002 and currently provides 69 streams (channels) of music and 65 streams of sports, news and entertainment to listeners. Music streams on Sirius carry a wide variety of genres, broadcasting 24 hours daily, commercial-free, and uncensored. A subset of Sirius music channels is included as part of the Dish Network satellite television service. Sirius channels are identified by Arbitron with the label "SR" (e.g. "SR120", "SR9", "SR17").

Its business model is to provide pay-for-service radio, analogous to the business model for premium cable television. Music channels are presented without commercials while talk channels, such as Howard Stern's Howard 100 and Howard 101 and The Opie & Anthony Channel, do have regular commercials. At approximately 6 minutes per hour, the number of commercials are still less than the average on terrestrial radio or television.^{[citation needed]} Furthermore, all channels are free from FCC content regulation, thus songs are played unedited for language, and talk programs may feature explicit content if they wish. Subscriptions are prepaid and range in price from US$12.95 monthly (US$8.99 for each additional receiver) to US$499.99 for lifetime (of the receiver equipment) subscription. There is a US$15 activation fee for every radio activated. Sirius announced it had achieved its first positive cash flow quarter for the period ending December 2006.

Satellite radio is an analogue or digital radio signal that is relayed through one or more satellites and thus can be received in a much wider geographical area than terrestrial FM radio stations. While in Europe many primarily-FM radio stations provide an additional unencrypted satellite feed, there are also subscription based digital packages of numerous channels that do not broadcast terrestrially, notably in the US. In Europe, FM radio is used by many suppliers that use a network of several local FM repeaters to broadcast a single programme to a large area, usually a whole nation. Many of those have an additional satellite signal that can be heard in many parts of the continent. In contrast, US terrestrial stations are always local and each of them has a unique programme, albeit they are sometimes interconnected for syndicated contents; but each local station still carries its own commercial and news breaks even then. This means that a national distribution of the contents of original terrestrial stations via satellite makes no real sense in the US, wherefore satellite radio is used in a different way there. History: Began broadcasting January 5, 2001 at 11:17AM Eastern, Tim McGraw was the first artist ever played on satellite radio. He gave a special welcome introduction which segued into his song "Things Change" on Sirius! Mobile services, such as Sirius, XM, and Worldspace, allow listeners to roam across an entire continent, listening to the same audio programming anywhere they go. Other services, such as Music Choice or Muzak's satellite-delivered content, require a fixed-location receiver and a dish antenna. In all cases, the antenna must have a clear view to the satellites. In areas where tall buildings, bridges, or even parking garages obscure the signal, repeaters can be placed to make the signal available to listeners.