In 2015, Zane Lowe left his job as a DJ on the BBC’s venerable Radio 1 in the U.K. to become the principal voice of a new digital radio station at the music-streaming service launched that year by Apple. Among his duties: an hour-long show beamed live from Los Angeles every weekday starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time.
A decade later, Lowe is a fixture of pop music around the globe: a relentlessly upbeat tastemaker-turned-cheerleader whose touchy-feely interviews with the biggest names on the charts draw audiences in the millions on Apple Music and YouTube. Which means he probably could move his show to a more comfortable hour if he wanted to.
“What’s more comfortable than 9 a.m.?” asks Lowe, who still gets up Monday through Friday and schleps to Apple’s Culver City studios to spin records 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 especially — in an age of on-demand entertainment, Lowe, 51, is bullish on the promise of live 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. Last month the tech giant expanded its radio offerings — in addition to Apple Music 1, it already had Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country — with three new stations: Apple Música Uno, a Latin-music channel; the dance-focused Apple Music Club; and Apple Music Chill, which the company calls “an escape, a refuge, a sanctuary in sound” and which features input from the ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno. Each runs 24 hours a day with programming hosted by a mix of veteran radio personalities and musicians such as 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 president of music and sports. “And that’s more important today than it ever was.”
Cupertino-based Apple — whose music-streaming service counts 93 million subscribers, according to Business of Apps — wouldn’t specify how many people listen to its radio stations. “We’re not a numbers kind of company,” Schusser says — one advantage of being part of a corporation routinely described as the world’s most valuable.
Yet Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst at Midia Research, says Apple Music’s investment in radio “isn’t just some experiment they can throw money at because they’re Apple.” At a moment when the growth of digital streaming has slowed, the stations are a way for Apple Music to distinguish itself from competitors like Spotify — the clear industry leader with 640 million users — and Amazon Music. (Unlike Apple, Spotify offers 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 customers, Spotify has gone big on podcasts and audiobooks. Live radio, Cirisano says, “adds some scarcity to the marketplace. And live entertainment experiences” — think of the splashy deals Netflix has struck recently 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 new stations reflect the platform’s broader commitment to bringing “a human touch” to the streaming ecosystem. It’s a framing that seems intended to draw a contrast with Spotify, which in 2023 introduced a DJ-like feature controlled by artificial intelligence and which last month drew widespread criticism for incorporating AI into its popular 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.”
In addition to Lowe, Apple Music Radio features broadcasting pros like Ebro Darden, who also hosts a morning show on New York’s Hot 97; Nadeska Alexis, who came up through MTV and Complex; and Evelyn Sicairos, formerly of Univision. (Before she joined Apple in 2015, Eshaya worked as a producer on Ryan Seacrest’s morning show on L.A.’s KIIS-FM.) But Lowe, who also holds the title of global creative director — and who recently stepped in for James Corden as host of a special holiday edition of “Carpool Karaoke” — is clearly Apple Music’s guiding personality.
Born and raised in New Zealand, he made music himself before going into radio and reckons it’s his artistic temperament that allows him to connect intimately on the air with stars such as Adele, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny. “I speak the artist language,” Lowe says in his office in Culver City. “I think most artists would probably go, ‘Yeah, he gets it.’ ” Curled on a sofa wedged into the corner of the dimly lighted room, he’s dressed in his customary baggy jeans and sweater and wears a pair of stylish geometric glasses. “And I like working at a company that rewards that,” he adds.
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 level of deference in his interviews that can 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 think of 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 show in September to promote her album “143” — a would-be comeback LP that earned some of last year’s harshest reviews — he told her the new music was “such a gift” and that she’d reclaimed her role as “the Katy Perry that everybody loves”; more to the point, he declined to ask Perry about her controversial decision to reunite with the producer Dr. Luke after she’d earlier parted ways with him in 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 back on the idea that Lowe avoids tough questions, citing a 2020 interview with Justin Bieber in which the pop star tearfully discussed his history of self-destructive behavior. “I’m pretty sure that Justin’s publicist would not have wanted the conversation to go the way it went,” Schusser says. Yet it’s common knowledge in the music industry that, after Lowe conducts a prerecorded interview (as opposed to one he does live), an artist and/or their reps are welcome to request cuts — not exactly protocol even within the often-chummy world of celebrity journalism.
Then again, as Lowe himself points out, he doesn’t work for a news operation. “I’m in a streaming service where we’re trying to get more people to listen to music,” says the married father of two teenage sons. “My job is to help a business be healthy.” Darden, who’s known on Hot 97 as an aggressive interviewer, says that “on Apple, I try to create more space for the art and more grace for the artist” than in the more pressurized realm of terrestrial radio.
“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 — many of whom already regard interviews with traditional journalists as an unnecessary risk in the era of social media — a friendly chat on Apple Music Radio might represent a safer way to reach an audience disinclined to worry about the finer points of how (and why) pop-star content 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 musicians interact 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 incentive to do something else? Schusser isn’t exaggerating by much 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 in part by paying a higher royalty rate per stream than Spotify, has always been crucial to its brand: In Apple Music’s early days, the service brokered deals for exclusive access to albums by Frank Ocean, Drake and Chance the Rapper; among the other stars with radio shows on the platform today are Summer 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 thing Apple is planning in the next few years, according to the exec: upgrading its studios in cities including L.A., Nashville, Berlin and Paris so that the company can produce small ticketed events.)
“Music doesn’t get event-ized enough” in the streaming economy, 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.”
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