In 2015, Zane Lowe left his job as a DJ on the BBC’s venerable Radio 1 within the U.Ok. to grow to be the principal voice of a brand new digital radio station on the music-streaming service launched that yr by Apple. Amongst his duties: an hour-long present beamed reside from Los Angeles each weekday beginning at 9 a.m. Pacific time.
A decade later, Lowe is a fixture of pop music across the globe: a relentlessly upbeat tastemaker-turned-cheerleader whose touchy-feely interviews with the largest names on the charts draw audiences within the hundreds of thousands on Apple Music and YouTube. Which implies he most likely may transfer his present to a extra comfy hour if he wished to.
“What’s more comfortable than 9 a.m.?” asks Lowe, who nonetheless will get up Monday by means of Friday and schleps to Apple’s Culver Metropolis studios to spin data and chat up pop stars on the platform’s flagship Apple Music 1 station. “I can’t sleep past 6 anyway, man. I get up, do some boxing and I’m f— ready. Gimme a coffee, get me on the air, I’m stoked.”
Even — or particularly — in an age of on-demand leisure, Lowe, 51, is bullish on the promise of reside radio. “Music sounds different to me in that room than it does anywhere else,” he says of his spot behind the console. “I love the idea of being able to alter the energy of whatever’s going on in people’s lives in different time zones with one song.”
Apple shares his enthusiasm. Final month the tech large expanded its radio choices — along with Apple Music 1, it already had Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Nation — with three new stations: Apple Música Uno, a Latin-music channel; the dance-focused Apple Music Membership; and Apple Music Chill, which the corporate calls “an escape, a refuge, a sanctuary in sound” and which options enter from the ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno. Every runs 24 hours a day with programming hosted by a mixture of veteran radio personalities and musicians equivalent to Becky G and Stephan Moccio.
“The reason we started radio was because we want to be a place where culture happens, where parties are starting, where artists come and get to have a safe space to talk about why they made certain music,” says Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice chairman of music and sports activities. “And that’s more important today than it ever was.”
Cupertino-based Apple — whose music-streaming service counts 93 million subscribers, based on Enterprise of Apps — wouldn’t specify how many individuals hearken to its radio stations. “We’re not a numbers kind of company,” Schusser says — one benefit of being a part of a company routinely described because the world’s most beneficial.
But Tatiana Cirisano, a music business analyst at Midia Analysis, says Apple Music’s funding in radio “isn’t just some experiment they can throw money at because they’re Apple.” At a second when the expansion of digital streaming has slowed, the stations are a method for Apple Music to differentiate itself from opponents like Spotify — the clear business chief with 640 million customers — and Amazon Music. (Not like Apple, Spotify provides a free ad-supported plan.)
“If you think about the past decade of streaming, it’s been characterized by a complete lack of differentiation, where all these platforms had the same interface and the same catalog,” Cirisano says of the format that now accounts for 84% of recorded music revenues. “But that’s not enough to compete anymore because we’re running out of potential new subscribers.” To lure prospects, Spotify has gone massive on podcasts and audiobooks. Reside radio, Cirisano says, “adds some scarcity to the marketplace. And live entertainment experiences” — consider the splashy offers Netflix has struck lately with the NFL and WWE — “are sort of the last scarce entertainment experience now that everything is available on demand.”
Natalie Eshaya, who oversees Apple Music Radio, says the brand new stations replicate the platform’s broader dedication to bringing “a human touch” to the streaming ecosystem. It’s a framing that appears supposed to attract a distinction with Spotify, which in 2023 launched a DJ-like characteristic managed by synthetic intelligence and which final month drew widespread criticism for incorporating AI into its well-liked year-end Wrapped promotion. At Apple, Eshaya says, “We choose the music and we curate the programming — that’s been the moral compass since Day 1.”
Ebro Darden, proper, talks with Jennifer Lopez on Apple Music 1 in New York in 2024.
(Tomas Herold / Getty Photos for Apple Music)
Along with Lowe, Apple Music Radio options broadcasting professionals like Ebro Darden, who additionally hosts a morning present on New York’s Scorching 97; Nadeska Alexis, who got here up by means of MTV and Advanced; and Evelyn Sicairos, previously of Univision. (Earlier than she joined Apple in 2015, Eshaya labored as a producer on Ryan Seacrest’s morning present on L.A.’s KIIS-FM.) However Lowe, who additionally holds the title of world artistic director — and who lately stepped in for James Corden as host of a particular vacation version of “Carpool Karaoke” — is clearly Apple Music’s guiding persona.
Born and raised in New Zealand, he made music himself earlier than going into radio and reckons it’s his inventive temperament that permits him to attach intimately on the air with stars equivalent to Adele, Billie Eilish, Girl Gaga and Unhealthy Bunny. “I speak the artist language,” Lowe says in his workplace in Culver Metropolis. “I think most artists would probably go, ‘Yeah, he gets it.’ ” Curled on a settee wedged into the nook of the dimly lighted room, he’s wearing his customary saggy denims and sweater and wears a pair of trendy geometric glasses. “And I like working at a company that rewards that,” he provides.
What Lowe views as his empathy with musicians — “The trust that artists have in him is kind of iconic,” Eshaya says — is seen by some as a stage of deference in his interviews that may border on obsequiousness. “I’m aware of the fact that some people feel I’m overly positive or I’m not critical enough,” he says. “But I just don’t think that’s my job. There are certain things that artists may feel are sensitive — could be personal, could be a tragedy in their life, could be something they’re not willing to talk about — and I don’t necessarily feel like I have a responsibility to get that information or that they have an obligation to give it to me.”
Does he consider himself as a journalist?
“No, I actually don’t,” Lowe says. “I have an opportunity to spend an hour with an amazing artist, and I really want it to be the most beautiful human experience I can have.” When Katy Perry went on Lowe’s present in September to advertise her album “143” — a would-be comeback LP that earned a few of final yr’s harshest evaluations — he informed her the brand new music was “such a gift” and that she’d reclaimed her function as “the Katy Perry that everybody loves”; extra to the purpose, he declined to ask Perry about her controversial resolution to reunite with the producer Dr. Luke after she’d earlier parted methods with him within the wake of Kesha’s allegations that he’d sexually assaulted her. (Kesha and Luke reached a settlement in 2023.)
“I did the best I could in the environment that I was in to have that conversation. We both enjoyed each other’s company, and her fans seemed to like it,” Lowe says. “In that moment, given the timing of the music and where we were and how quickly it was all happening, it’s not something that we landed on.”
Schusser pushes again on the concept that Lowe avoids powerful questions, citing a 2020 interview with Justin Bieber through which the pop star tearfully mentioned his historical past of self-destructive conduct. “I’m pretty sure that Justin’s publicist would not have wanted the conversation to go the way it went,” Schusser says. But it’s widespread information within the music business that, after Lowe conducts a prerecorded interview (versus one he does reside), an artist and/or their reps are welcome to request cuts — not precisely protocol even inside the often-chummy world of superstar journalism.
“People are listening to Hot in their cars, and they’ve got very limited time,” he says of his morning gig. “You stepped into the room, we got to get to it. Start the chainsaw, you know what I mean?”
To musicians planning an album rollout — lots of whom already regard interviews with conventional journalists as an pointless threat within the period of social media — a pleasant chat on Apple Music Radio may signify a safer method to attain an viewers disinclined to fret concerning the finer factors of how (and why) pop-star content material is created.
“I can’t repair any relationships between A and B — I can only do what’s required when they want C,” Lowe says of the way in which musicians work together with legacy media and with him. “I can’t do someone else’s role just because they don’t get to do it, and I have access.”
And what’s the motivation to do one thing else? Schusser isn’t exaggerating by a lot when he says, “Every artist on the planet that has a new project — whether it’s an album, a song, a tour, a collaboration — they’re all coming to us.” Apple’s coziness with musicians, which it facilitates partially by paying the next royalty fee per stream than Spotify, has at all times been essential to its model: In Apple Music’s early days, the service brokered offers for unique entry to albums by Frank Ocean, Drake and Probability the Rapper; among the many different stars with radio reveals on the platform as we speak are Summer season Walker, Rauw Alejandro, Jamie xx, Hardy and Elton John, who’s hosted “Rocket Hour” since 2015.
“Most companies that work in streaming are technology companies — they don’t really care about music,” Schusser says. “If it’s books or podcasts or something else, it’s just bits and bytes. We’re a music company, and we have no intention to add other things into our music experience.” (One factor Apple is planning within the subsequent few years, based on the exec: upgrading its studios in cities together with L.A., Nashville, Berlin and Paris in order that the corporate can produce small ticketed occasions.)
“Music doesn’t get event-ized enough” within the streaming economic system, Lowe says. “It gets released mostly at the same time, then it fights for itself, and it’s really hard because there’s a lot to fight against. This is easily the cheesiest thing I can tell you, but music is incredibly special. Putting an hour or two hours of radio together to create a mood — it sends a message that it’s worth showing up for.”
