This paper presents the personalized satellite radio, a novel satellite-based radio concept, capable of providing radio services to vehicular terminals. This paper describes the technical Solution proposed, which overcomes the classical streaming approach used for traditional radio. The main concept behind it is that individual audio and Multimedia files are broadcast to the mobile users instead of transmitting a number of continuous streams. The received files are stored in a large cache located in the receiver of each mobile terminal and are sequentially played to generate a service similar to traditional radio/entertainment programmes. The resulting file-based radio approach makes, in particular, use of higher-layer coding at the transport layer and smart techniques to build up an audible programme with no interruptions and full audio quality based oil the available files. This paper also presents the results of extensive trials that were conducted with a system prototype developed in the framework of an European Space Agency funded project. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.