FEATURE:
Station to Station
Part Nine: Zane Lowe (Apple Music 1)
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FOR the ninth part…
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Schmelling for The New York Times
of my Station to Station feature – where I highlight and celebrate inspiring broadcasters and D.J.s -, I am focusing on someone who has had a long and successful career in radio. Many might have first encountered Zane Lowe on BBC Radio 1. The Auckland-born broadcaster is one of the most respected and influential people in radio – and the wider media for that matter. Following an early career in music making, production and DJing in New Zealand, Lowe moved to the U.K. in 1997. He made a name for himself presenting on XFM and MTV Europe (MTV Two), going on to host a new global music show on BBC Radio 1 from 2003–2015. Now broadcasting on Apple Music 1, Lowe has come a long way. One feels he has a lot more to give; so many other opportunities will come his way. I would advise people to check out The Zane Lowe Interview Series, as there is a fascinating array of guests to be found! The plethora and quality of the guests Lowe interviews is amazing. I will come to a couple of different interviews that Zane Lowe has been involved in. One is from 2019 when he was at Beats 1 (now Apple Music 1). He was discussing how he was putting Hip-Hop in the spotlight. The second, from 2020, is with The New York Times. On Apple 1, there is a lot of talent and diversity to be heard. I think that Lowe is among the very finest. The interview with The New York Times is all about how Lowe is the sort of unofficial Pop therapist; how he can get so much from those he interviews (the station was still Beats 1 at the time of the interview, hence the mention of it throughout).
Before getting to that first interview, here is a bit of bio/information from the Apple Music 1 page regarding Zane Lowe and what he brings to the table:
“On his namesake show and New Music Daily, Apple Music 1’s flagship shows, host Zane Lowe brings users unparalleled music knowledge with headline interviews, breaking news, and emerging music from around the globe every day. It’s become the world’s go-to for the best brand-new music, sure, but it’s also popular music’s premier confessional booth: Day after day, Zane—who’s also Apple Music’s global creative director and co-head of artist relations—gets the biggest, most elusive superstars, from Justin Bieber to Taylor Swift ** to Kanye West, to let their guards down—laughs, tears, and news-making quotes are the norm”.
I want to drop in an interview with Music Business Worldwide, where Lowe talked about Beats 1/him getting exclusive interviews; how streaming music/sounds creates this sort of meeting place:
“Lowe, Apple Music’s Global Creative Director, says 24/7 radio station Beats 1 sets out to create a “club room” environment for artists; a place where they can hang out and express themselves – whether “on cycle” with a record or not.
It’s a pretty smart strategy: Build genuinely meaningful relationships with the world’s biggest artists, give them a platform to say and play whatever they want, and drive the global conversation around music in the process. And you only need look at Beats 1’s schedule from the past week to see the impact it’s having.
Case in point: On Saturday (October 19) Frank Ocean released his new single DHL on a new episode of his Beats 1 radio show, blonded, which aired for the first time in two years. The track marked the artist’s first new music since 2017.
And then, yesterday (October 24), Beats 1 grabbed the world’s headlines via Lowe’s two-hour long interview with Kanye West. It was the rapper’s first interview in over a-year-and-half, in which he discussed the making of his new album Jesus Is King – released today.
This past week has also seen the launch of the first Beats 1 Rap Life Radio show with Ebro Darden, centered around Apple Music’s popular Rap Life playlist. In addition, there’s been a Gucci Mane interview, plus today’s debut of Lowe’s new, weekly New Music Daily show with guest appearances from Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, and Chris Martin, bringing to life Apple’s New Music Daily playlist launched last month.
Says Lowe: “We are just trying to create lots of depth and lots of opportunities and not just be a conduit for one experience. We want artists to be able to do whatever they want, ultimately. That’s always been the dream.”
Here, MBW catches up with Lowe to find out about the new playlists, live shows and how Apple Music and Beats 1 are committed to super-serving artists and fans…
WHY ARE APPLE MUSIC AND BEATS 1 GETTING THESE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS AND PREMIERES? AND WHY ARE SOME OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST RADIO STATIONS… NOT GETTING THEM?
I can’t speak for anyone else. I know that we’ve really spent, coming up on five years, trying to build up what I would consider to be a deep and valued experience. We opened our doors from day one. We really relinquished as much of the control over the experience as possible, in terms of [not] asking artists to do things that benefited us more than them.
We were very, very transparent from the beginning in terms of wanting artists to be able to use Beats 1 as a function on Apple Music to be creative; to do what they want to do. To make radio shows or take over the station or play their projects in full or interview each other. Or do one-off our specials about subjects or causes that mean something and mattered to them.
I hope there isn’t an artist, we’ve worked with, certainly when it comes to them making their own shows and seasons and content and creative, that would say that we’ve kind of put our own ideas or our own interests before theirs.
In terms of the distribution and the way that music reaches an audience now, streaming is the meeting place. It’s the club room, where artists and fans come together and share that really precious thing. The fact that we built this kind of environment within a streaming service, ultimately just kind of ticks a lot of boxes.
It creates a more eclectic experience and it actually fosters individuality more than, I think, driving individuals to a place where the brand is the star. I want to get away from a place where artists are [considered] lucky to be a part of a brand. It’s like, No. We are lucky to be around you.
And now we’re at a point where that idea of being able to distribute your own music, reach your fans, to DM artists and ask them for collaborations or ask them to support you, and just be very much in control ultimately of your environment, is so exciting.
I love it when an artist signs a record deal and they are happy about it. I love it when an artist finds a lawyer or a manager, an agent, or does an interview with me and they’re happy about it. More than ever, artists are in a position whereby they can do what they want, when they want, and decide how they want to expand their business model and who they want to work with.
We’re living in a time where the artists have so much more control over their own destiny. And [Apple Music is] in a space where we’ve been so artist-orientated from day one. I look at a streaming service like TIDAL and I respect them for the same thing. They came out very artist-orientated.
We’ve been quite exemplary at that. We’ve been very artist-focused, very supportive of their creative identity, and not really tried to compromise that for our own benefit.
We have a lot of space and an increasing amount of tools, playlists, shows, ideas, and creative that is there to support the artists and connect them to the audience because their audience are our subscribers. I am their audience, I am a subscriber. When I go on Apple Music, I want to have the best experience as a subscriber, not just because I work here. I want to have a deeper experience because that is the kind of music fan I am”.
It is interesting hearing what Zane Lowe had to say in that interview. Since then (2019), he has spoken with some of the biggest names in music and brought some incredible new music to the people. I like how passionate he is about music after so many years in the business! One of the great things about Lowe, besides his drive and restless curiosity, is how he communicates with musicians – how his interviews differ from other people’s.
When he spoke with The New York Times last year, we got a sense of Lowe’s gifts and how he can bring so much from his guests. It is an illuminating and fascinating interview:
“Justin Bieber cried. Hayley Williams too.
Sitting in a studio in Culver City, Calif., opposite Zane Lowe, the grey-stubbled Beats 1 host and Apple Music honcho, musicians tend to unspool, even shed a tear. They talk about their albums, but also their divorces and regrets, their influences and coping mechanisms. It’s therapy, but for an audience of millions, and with a propulsive, ever-enthusiastic host who also helps shapes the narrative, and the placement, of the songs we hear.
As one of the largest digital music services, Apple is a must-visit for musicians pitching a record, and Lowe — who, as Apple Music’s global creative director and co-head of artist relations, helps oversee programming for its radio station Beats 1, and anchors several shows — is its cheerleading emissary. With major artists increasingly eschewing interviews with traditional journalists, he still manages to reel in big names.
“I’m not really promoting,” Lady Gaga said when she stopped by recently to discuss “Chromatica,” her latest album. “I view this conversation as something that I would want to do anyway. You know how I feel about your perception of music and how it affects people and the world.”
Since 2014, when Lowe, now 46, was recruited from London and the BBC to join Apple in California, he has emerged as a trusted figure — a hyped-up fan stand-in who artists also view as a peer and a pleasure to talk to. But over the past year, Lowe’s role has shifted. His conversations started veering into how the creative process intersects with mental illness or emotional stability, and he leaned into it, using himself as an example: He has anxiety, he will freely tell you, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Lowe’s hourlong daily interviews are a promotional stop, for sure, but they don’t feel that way for performers. “Never once have I felt like I was selling myself or even selling an album while doing promo with Zane,” Williams said. “Thank God for that. There’s genuine curiosity in his voice, and the allowance for vulnerability means that nobody has to walk away feeling misrepresented.”
Lowe’s friend Mark Ronson, the musician and producer, said: “He’s extraordinarily perceptive. He’ll mention something to me or notice the way I’ve been acting the past month — just kind of notice something that I didn’t even notice in myself.”
Another friend, the country star Keith Urban, wrote in an email, “He knows I don’t wanna just be interviewed. I want a conversation.”
Talking with Lowe, said Trent Reznor, who helped bring him to Beats radio, “you feel safe.”
If a Beats 1 interview is a release valve for artists, it functions the same way for Lowe, especially lately. “I have these voices that I’m trying to bury through work and productivity, just like everybody else,” he said. In the past, “the simple thing for me was to go really deep into music — just pull the thread and go deep, deep, deep.”
He was introduced to music broadcasting early, courtesy of his father, Derek, a founder of Radio Hauraki, New Zealand’s pirate radio. (In the ’60s, “They fought the government for the right to broadcast and play rock ’n’ roll,” Lowe said, “and they won! It’s the kind of stuff Richard Curtis makes movies about.”)
One of his earliest memories — “I must’ve only been like 2”— is seeing a large cardboard cutout of the prismatic triangle from “Dark Side of the Moon” at his dad’s station. Then there was the rifling through his older brother’s record collection, where he discovered the Cure, and the influence of his mother, Liz, a career counselor, who introduced him to Joni Mitchell and Tom Petty.
Lowe has been broadcasting from the Hollywood home he shares with his wife, Kara Walters, and two sons, ages 11 and 14 — like all of us searching for the room with the most robust Wi-Fi and best angle for a video chat. (In his case he’s trying to position himself to block out an air vent: “I’m talking to Future the other day, he’s so intense and so amazing when he talks — he’s like jazz improv, like Charlie Parker — and I’m thinking, like, air vent! Jesus Christ, get your head in front of the air vent!”)
When Reznor, the Nine Inch Nails frontman, began working on Beats 1 with Jimmy Iovine, he had a vision for a radio show that was almost entirely cribbed from Lowe’s BBC program, on which he’d been a guest — “something that feels live, and it feels global,” Reznor said. “Let’s see if it’s possible to have a monoculture in this world.”
“He very much lived up to what I hoped for in that capacity,” Reznor added.
For Lowe, discovering that artists might be going through the same hurdles he had — and that they might be ready to share it with him, and his audience — changed his perception of their work. “I just started to listen to music differently,” he said, searching beneath the lyrics, “the melody and the energy — there were other things buried in there.” And, he realized, he was adept at excavating them”.
I think that Zane Lowe is one of the most important figures in modern radio. He commands a lot of respect and, with many years ahead of him, I am interested to see what is next. I know he will be at Apple 1 for a long time, and he will continue to interview fantastic artists and bring us terrific music. If you have not heard his show or checked out his interviews, then go and check them out and see…
WHY he is so revered.