Beats 1’s “flagship” DJ Zane Lowe has confirmed that his first interview on his new show on 30th June will be Eminem. He’s posted photos so we can presume it’s a pre-record rather than live. Ahead of next Tuesday, the New York Times has a big piece on the station and what it thinks it will offer that’s dramatically different from everyone else. It speaks to Lowe as he gets in shape for the first broadcasts and the “sell” is that he is very different from the “mild-mannered corporate executives who usually represent Apple in public”.
(Expect a lot of this sort of stuff in the coming weeks that suggests wearing “sneakers” and a pleather bomber jacket somehow makes him a firecracker compared to his “buttoned-up” bosses. Bonus points too, as this piece does, for a genuflecting reference to John Peel.) Lowe said he left Xfm in London for Radio 1 as he could “play records to the nation” and the spin on the defection to Beats 1 is that he can (wait for it, wait for it) “play records to the whole world”.
He says his show is a reaction to the always-on culture gripping most music fans in major markets. “Everyone keeps going to their devices because of fear of missing out,” he says. “I’m constantly going on Instagram, Twitter, wondering what’s going on in my friends’ lives. What am I missing? I want that for radio. What’s on right now, right now, that I didn’t know I wanted to listen to?” Interestingly he says they spent three months trying to come up with a new word that wasn’t radio but decided to accept the inevitable and call what they are doing “radio”. (Maybe he didn’t download the Thesaurus app on his new iPhone.) Still, despite the fawning tone, this is quite an interesting peek behind the curtain.
