With most Sirius-enabled radios, the user can see the artist and song information on display while listening to the stream. The streams are broadcast from three satellites in an elliptical geosynchronous orbit above North America. Its business model is to provide pay-for-service radio, analogous to the business model for premium cable television, in which music channels are free of commercials. Subscription costs for Sirius range from $12.95/mo. ($6.99 for multi-receivers) to $499.99 for a lifetime subscription. There is a $10 - $15 activation fee for every radio activated. Sirius currently has fewer subscribers compared to competitor XM Satellite Radio, with 6.024 million, less than XM's current audience of roughly 7.6 million. However, Sirius is gaining new subscribers at a faster rate than XM. In 2006, Sirius added a record 2.7 million net subscribers,to XM's less than 1.7 million.

Sirius was previously known as CD Radio. The company changed its name to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. on November 18, 1999. The dog in the Sirius logo (Sirius is referred to as the "Dog Star") is unofficially named “Mongo,” a name garnered from the debut of Sirius Satellite Radio’s sponsorship on Casey Atwood’s and later Jimmy Spencer’s NASCAR entry, when the announcing cast voted on names. “Mongo” later became NASCAR driver Spencer’s nickname with the NASCAR Broadcasters in the following races.

On October 16, 2006 Sirius announced that it would be launching Sirius Internet Radio with 78 of its 135 stations being available worldwide on the internet to any of its subscribers with a valid user name and password.