LOS ANGELES — 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 hourlong 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.”