Ever since the arrival of Beats 1, the 24/7 streaming online radio station, DJ Zane Lowe has been busy. But he recently found some time to speak with Billboard and opine on a variety of topics.
That includes Beats 1, but also the current state of Apple Music and what still needs to click into place, the first time that he ever met prolific artist Dr. Dre, and more. Interestingly enough, Lowe pointed out that he believes whittling down the song genres played on any station to numbers, percentages, means you’re not playing music based on the merits therein, but based on some form of obligation:
“We’ve played country music, Mexican house music, South American EDM, German hip-hop. I’ve never been a fan of, “We’ve got to get 22 percent of rock, 17 percent of R&B; where’s our 16 percent of hip-hop and our 9 percent of country?” If you do it that way, you’re not basing it on the merit of the music. You’re basing it on some kind of obligation.“
Related to that, numbers recently revealedthat hip-hop is the number one genre played on Beats 1 up to this point, and that The Weeknd is the top artist. Many have suggested that Beats 1, and the hosts promoting the music, have leaned heavily towards hip-hop since Beats 1 debuted, but Lowe apparently doesn’t see it that way.
Lowe goes a bit into detail about the first time that he ever met Dr. Dre in an interesting story, looking back at his trip to Los Angeles for Grammy’s week, and a meeting that was scheduled at Jimmy Iovine’s home to talk about Apple Music. There, Iovine was present, along with Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre. Apple’s Eddy Cue and Robert Kondrk were also on hand at the meeting:
“I’d never met him until I started having conversations with Jimmy and Trent [Reznor] about coming to Los Angeles. I was out here on Grammy weekend, and there was a meeting at Jimmy’s house. That was the moment where we laid out, initially at least, what we were hoping to achieve with Beats 1. It was a double whammy, because I was in the same room as Jimmy and [Apple senior vp Internet software and services] Eddy Cue and [vp iTunes content] Robert Kondrk, who I was meeting for the first time, and Trent. I’m trying to concentrate on saying the right things to get my point across and not stumble too hard, and at the same time I’m having these out-of-body experiences here and there, like “Dr. Dre, f—!” Which I’m sure he’s used to seeing, but I was just trying to keep my game face on.“
Lowe also pointed out that there’s still room for sections of Apple Music to click in place, and that Apple is still working on improving the features tied into the streaming music service, including the For You section:
“What we’re working toward is this one place where people can go to [the] “For You” [feature] and be fed these wonderful handmade playlists according to their tastes, go to Beats 1 and have a shared listening experience and then go to “Connect” and get close to the artists. The whole thing should work symbiotically. Also, we’re a broadcasting platform on a music service, so when people hear something they like, the idea is they’ll go deep: go into the music service, learn more, listen to the albums. That’s really important.“
Have you still been using Apple Music and listening to Beats 1?
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