"Check-check. One two-two-two-two-two. Hello hello hello." Zane Lowe, Britain's most influential radio DJ, stood in a rented studio in Hollywood one recent morning, cursing about the hiss in his headphones. "One two, one two, one two," he barked into the mic. "I can't even hear myself."
For the last 12 years, Lowe has been a top tastemaker on the BBC's Radio 1 by championing brand-new music, landing interviews with stars like Kanye West and running his show with a frenetic production style inspired by hip-hop itself. Now he is preparing for a much broader role as the guiding voice of Beats 1, a free Internet radio station from Apple that on Tuesday will begin broadcasting to smartphones and laptops around the world - an experiment, of sorts, to reinvent live radio.
The new gig also puts Lowe, 41, in the middle of the music industry's latest battleground: streaming. Beats 1 is part of a revamped music strategy for Apple, which revolutionised the music world with iTunes and the iPod but lately has sat on the sidelines as upstarts like Spotify, Pandora and SoundCloud lure listeners by making it easy to play songs online.
Last year, Apple paid $3 billion for one of those upstarts, Beats, and this month the company unveiled a multifaceted new service, Apple Music, which in addition to Beats 1 includes a subscription streaming service and a media platform for artists called Connect. It has signed a gaggle of celebrities to do shows on Beats 1, among them Pharrell Williams, Drake, even Elton John. Yet the mixed reaction to Apple's plans - including a complaint by Taylor Swift over royalties that led to a remarkable turnaround by Apple - shows how volatile the streaming music market is.
Standing at his microphone, Lowe was looking pretty volatile himself. Though he had his first big-get interview, with Eminem, later in the day, nothing in the studio seemed to be going his way: The sound was distorted, the layout of his new console was unfamiliar.
To calm down, he began spinning records like an old-school party DJ, flinging his hands over electronic mixers as the walls shook with booming beats. After several minutes of this exorcism-by-noise, he let the sound die down and exhaled.
"Feels like it might work," he said.
Compared with the mild-mannered corporate executives who usually represent Apple in public, Lowe is a new kind of animal for the company. A motormouth both on and off the air, he is an irrepressible advocate for the music he chooses to promote. And like that of the legendary BBC announcer John Peel before him, his endorsement carries major weight.
"Zane is a genuine enthusiast; this is not a fake thing," said John, whose Beats 1 show, "Elton John's Rocket Hour," will be an eclectic mix of old songs and new. "He's a fan, and he's a fan who's got the opportunity to make his position in the world work for other people. He genuinely loves music, and that's my kind of guy."
With a devilish stubble and a wardrobe of T-shirts that fit snugly over his muscular shoulders, Lowe - a New Zealander by birth - has carved out a certain celebrity status in Britain. But he is largely unknown in the United States, and he views Beats 1 as his opportunity to expand his profile globally.
Beats 1 is a high-tech twist on one of the oldest forms of electronic media. It is a fully programmed radio station, broadcasting with a complement of live DJs and even sponsors. But since it will be baked into every Apple mobile device as part of a new music app, it has the potential for a huge and instantaneous global reach.
2015© The New York Times News Service
