The BBC announced today that Zane Lowe, who has worked as an award-winning Radio 1 DJ for nearly twelve years, is stepping down from his position in March and moving to California to take up a role at Apple. Lowe has long been regarded as one of the UK’s top sources for music discovery, and his show helped make many artists the stars they are today.
Lowe hasn’t publicly stated what role he’ll be filling at the Cupertino tech company, but it’s not hard to conclude that he’ll be lending his curation expertise to the big upcoming relaunch of the Beats Music streaming service. Beats Music, of course, is already staffed by music industry icons Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre.
Aside from Lowe’s ability to seek out rising new artists, the DJ has also helmed a variety of interviews with artists like Kanye West and Eminem, and hosted entire shows focusing on popular albums of the past with his “Masterpieces” series. He has also helped produce several albums, which could help Apple eventually become a record label, should the company decide to go that route.
iTunes Radio currently features curated stations created by popular DJs, artists, and other celebrities. Beats Music offers a similar function.
Lowe’s final show will air on March 5th before Annie Mac takes over his timeslot.
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Awesome :)
Cool!
Apple hires Dracula!
Well, I guess i won’t be using Beats. Apple is really getting off their mark on this.
They need to just get focus on audio quality.
Apple a record label? Hahahahaha. I don’t think so. They don’t need the headache of signing acts, tracking projects and figuring out what to release and how to promote it. If the record labels that have HUGE catalogs of music that have been doing this for decades aren’t making any money, how could Apple do it any better? They don’t have the catalog in their possession, they are more of a distribution method that replaces a traditional brick and mortar record store.
A record label has to sign acts, they have to spend a lot of money on developing acts which many of them don’t see the light of day or don’t last long. For every successful album, there are 100’s that aren’t successful or even released to the market.
Can’t wait to read your commentary when there are some actual *facts* as to what is going on.
There is already a major record label called Apple Records, so Apple can’t become a record label, they already lost a lawsuit to Apple Records by just SELLING music and not even being a record label.
That’s what the facts are.
What do you think a record label does? Do you have any validity to your argument? I’ve been in and around the music industry and have studied music from people that are either top musicians that have been on Platinum albums with a large catalog of music they’re performed on, or produced. One of which produced some of hits by Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and many other top R&B singers. I know plenty of people that are either top musicians and/or producers in the music industry over the years.
Jeez. What’s your credibility? You watched the Grammy’s?
A record label signs an act either to actually spit out albums because the act has something sellable, or they sign a development deal where they THINK they have something sellable, but they still need to be developed to see if they can produce something that’s going to sell. I know musicians that have gotten development deals with Quincy Jones’ label and they worked with a top producer, they spit out an album that got limited air play and it went nowhere, it lost money they lost their deal and that was the extent of that band’s career. I know of others that got development deals where none of their stuff actually got released to the market. If you have spent any time working around and in the music industry, you know that there are lots bands that get development deals where they get fronted money, they go into the studio with a fairly big producer and what comes of it goes no where and the record label loses money on that.
Then there are the major hit albums where the label makes a ton of money to help offset the ones that lose money. Most albums lose money and only a handful of the hit albums make the profits.
Look at No Doubt, it took them a while until that band actually started to make money. Even after a major hit song, the band still was trying to pay off the money that was fronted to them on the records that weren’t hits.
When you get a record deal, the record label fronts production money and money for the artist/band to live off of, depending on the production costs, they either get something that’s sellable or they don’t. Not all records are released.
Go work in the music industry and talk to musicians that have been there and see what you find out.
Do you know how much it costs to put out an album and pay for the marketing of it and how many units they have to sell to recoup that investment? What do you think a record label does anyway? They front the money to pay for everything and they take the proceeds from sales and they only pay the musician AFTER they project has recouped the production and marketing costs. That’s why the real money is in publishing royalties and touring if they can sell out concerts charging top dollar and they can rake in more money than they put out and these days they typically will get sponsors to help promote the tour.
A lot of these musicians aren’t making much from actual record sales.
I found an interview with him and he sais that if you want to stay in this business for a long time you need to find and stay around smart people. I guess Apple are the smart people that Zane needed.
http://youtu.be/2XKRykuZH-I?t=11m20s
DJ’s and Rappers are nothing but parasites of the music industry. They aren’t musicians, they are sucking the life out of the music industry.
What are you on about?
Troll
OI Twat I have been a D.J. and in the industry for over 30 years, you just haven’t got a clue have you. who do you think promote upcoming tunes you idiot.
Jay-Z interview? Have you ever looked up Jay-Z’s history? He shot his brother when he was 12, stabbed someone in a nightclub with a knife and got 3 years probation, dealt crack cocaine? What a great role model.. /s
Damn, thats big news.
But Zane doesn’t do anything. What could he possibly do at Apple except for cost them money?
What do you mean he doesn’t do anything. Seriously!
He is one of the best DJs on radio who actually really knows the musics industry and the artists extremely well. (He’s won NME awards, Grammys etc)
Also, He is is also a massive music producer helping many artists such as Sam Smith Chase and status etc. with their music.
With his great personality and friendliness towards and with worldwide artists, who he is very interlinked with-he would be a great person for Apple to connect to music artists to allow their plans to be heavily music focused.
Liam, do you know anything about the Grammy’s? There are people that belong to RIAA that don’t even vote, let alone for each category, so in order to win, they don’t all get all that many votes. Don’t you even wonder how many people belong to the RIAA, how many actually vote and then for each nominee for each category?
The Grammy’s are practically meaningless these days, just like most of the crap coming out of these large record labels. It’s nothing but a bunch of phony BS.
I wasn’t that impressed with Sam Smith. I don’t know who or even care about Chase either.
I stopped paying attention to the Grammys a LONG time ago. It’s just a marketing ploy to sucker you into what they think is great music, when it isn’t. The day they added rap music is when it went down hill. DJ’s aren’t musicians, they just spin records. where’s the musicianship in that?
Apple’s not a record label and I doubt they could even become one since there is already a record label called APPLE RECORDS, ever hear of Apple Records? Come on. You just sound like some teenager that simply has extremely bad taste in music. So what if Zane is friendly towards these rappers and other BS artists spitting out crap music? Apple isn’t a record label, they already have contracts with all of the major record distribution companies without Zane, Dre and Iovine.
Apple just needs to revamp iTunes so it can better deal with different music formats like 24 bit, DSD, FLAC, being able to switch the Audio/MIDI settings on the fly and maybe add a few other key features that other music players have.
The problem with the music industry is that they aren’t putting out a lot of high quality product which is why the sales are going down. I personally am buying mostly older music that’s being remastered without all of the audio compression so I can actually hear what the original masters sound like. There are very few new recordings coming out that are worth a crap and it’s certainly not coming from the “pop” world. The “pop” world is basically run by idiots now and all it is computerized loops, sequences, noises, and sound effects with some idiot rapping or heavy use of pitch correction and the song writing is just awful.
@Rich The music quality on iTunes is very good as it is. I doubt that many people could tell a difference if they went HD, and I know the vast majority wouldn’t care. Sales are declining, most people are wanting to stream rather than purchase music they know they won’t be listening to after a few months. If anything, people want to be able to stream as much as possible, without using up a lot of their data, or storage if they downloaded for offline play, ergo I doubt many people want HD music anytime soon, if ever. Even assuming people did, the vast majority listen to their music with things that can’t play the HD sound in maximum quality, if at all.
@oOsmoothiesOo, sorry to disappoint you but the quality of AAC is STILL lossy, not lossless. No, AAC is not as good as lossless and on a good stereo/DAC you can tell. The best versions of AAC on iTunes Music Store is the Mastered for iTunes, where there is a VERY small catalog to choose from. Meantime, HDTracks and other similar stores are getting more and more sales, items in their catalog.
There is a growing number of people that are buying better USB DACs for their computer systems and/or MacMini to be used as a Music Server and connecting them to higher quality headphones and/or higher quality stereo systems. The reason why HD sales aren’t that high is because of the lack of content, but they are adding more and more content. Sony is starting to release tracks using DSD and then PCM 24 bit versions. Yeah, the amount of content isn’t as big, but it’s a growing industry. Also, more and more smartphones are using 24 Bit DACs internally, so probably within another couple of years Apple’s iPhone install base will probably be at around 90% with 24 Bit internal DACs.
Just to let you know, the DACs that Apple’s using will handle 24/96 inside iPhones, but they just haven’t turned on the feature via software. At least this is what I read sometime ago, so if Apple’s slowly getting 24 Bit DACs in their devices, at some point in time, it will make sense to release updated 24 Bit versions in a lossless format OR people will just buy it from other websites.
What I was referring to is how iTunes s/w handles files rather than iTunes the Music Store. Right now, iTunes doesn’t do FLAC, DSD, or automatically switch the Audio/MIDI settings when a 24 bit song is being played vs a 16 Bit version, so we have to buy an additional music player software that typically loads in addition to iTunes and that is just a little too kludgy for some of us.
I have no idea what Apple is going to do with the future of AAC as Apple has been collecting 24/96 versions from the record labels, I just don’t know how much they have actually collected.
Pono is doing Lossless, Tidal is doing lossless and Tidal announced that they are going to be implemeting Meridian’s MQA technology to improve the quality of their lossless and there seems to be a lot of interest in MQA by some of the larger record labels as what it does is essentially improves Lossless performance even more than it already is, but they have to re-encode the content into Lossless and then the user has to have s/w or h/w to decode it.
In terms of streaming vs buying? NOPE. buying is STILL far more $$ spent than Streaming. Here’s a recent article on streaming music vs buying.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/06/26/streaming-isnt-saving-music-industry-new-data-shows.
I was talking mostly in respects to the iTunes player s/w. It does need to be improved so that we can play any format FLAC, DSD, etc. and have the Audio/MIDI settings change on the fly. Some people have run into issues where they played a 24 Bit vs a 16 Bit version but they didn’t get the proper player s/w that automatically changes the Audio/MIDI settings and what happens is that 24 Bit gets played back at 16 Bit level instead of 24 Bit. A lot of people simply don’t understand that they should be getting an additional player (Bit Perfect, Pure Music, Audirvana, Amarra, Vox, JRiver, etc.).
They really do need to improve the iTunes s/w so we don’t have to buy additional software if we want to play back DSD files, etc. It should just automatically recognize it, play it, and make necessary changes.
On the PC side, Foobar is one of the better players and it is very feature rich for people that collect a lot of different files, and it has the ability to do AB comparisons which can be helpful.
I agree that the average person can’t tell, but in the audio world, there is a growing number of “audio enthusiasts” that are buying MacMinis and using them as dedicated music servers and I think if Apple stepped it up a notch with iTunes s/w, it will help drive more MacMini sales for dedicated music servers.
Look, what I’m saying compared to your view on “Zane doesn’t do anything” and your rant on the Grammy’s is that he has many links to the music industry and close relations to musicians in many genres.
Your taste on whether music is or isn’t good is irrelevant to the larger picture of how the WORLD listens music. If you think that your taste of music is better than what many others think is great, it clearly shows that your point on what Apple should or should not do is irrelevant. The point of iTunes is to bring ALL types of music to everyone. Honestly, it really lies with “young people” and whether they like it. You say DJs’ just spin tracks, well they may do, but its what music they do ‘spin’ and putting together a selection of songs and blending them together in a way that people actually like is itself a skill. That is what Beats Music was trying to achieve I guess.
Your idea of having better quality music or whatever is great, but to be honest that really won’t make a difference to the current state of music sales. You need to get musicians to do something different on iTunes to get people interested. And getting in Zane who knows the artists well, as well as being friends could definitely be an influence into how much collaborating they do with Apple.
When you say there are few recordings coming out that are worth a crap, this clearly shows you don’t listen to Zane’s show or even try and give an effort to discover new music. I bet you only listen to what is in the top ten of the charts and take your bets that that is what most new music is like. The point of having someone like Zane, is to have someone who has a had a career in introducing new artists and helping people realise its out there.
Culture changes and people don’t listen to the same stuff every year. Having someone who knows how the music landscape is changing would be highly beneficial, whereas I’m guessing you would would love music to stay stationary on a single genre and stay there.
Plus I seriously don’t get this point: “Apple’s not a record label and I doubt they could even become one since there is already a record label called APPLE RECORDS, ever hear of Apple Records? Come on. You just sound like some teenager that simply has extremely bad taste in music.” I don’t know how this makes sense at all or of any relevance-Do you just want me to mention the Beatles or something.
Must. Chase. Youth.
Kind of a cool hire. Zane Lowe does care about music. But ultimately, he is generally pre-eminent in safe mainstream rock music/singer-songwriters. You can easily trace the line from the U2 debacle to here.
If Apple wanted someone definitively relevant and future-facing they could’ve hired Benji B. If they wanted someone truly with their finger on the pulse of electronic music and club culture (much to Jony Ive’s liking) they could’ve hired B. Traits. If they wanted the hip-hop John Peel they could’ve gone with Semtex. And if they wanted someone with a vast knowledge and clear love of music, who’s still current as ever, they could’ve gone with Trevor Nelson. You could go on and on naming DJs that embody culture there.
Instead they’ve gone for someone who isn’t terrible, but is one of the least interesting DJs at the BBC; presuming his role is in the area of curation.
The U2 decision stood out so badly for being an archaic misstep from a company that defines the present and future. This hire feels like a more reserved version of Apple execs’ staid dad rock tendencies coming through.
The biggest benefit of this hire is Annie Mac is now getting a more prominent position at the BBC, and Annie Mac is cool as fuck.
I even prefer Molecule’s work as far as producing hip hop grooves.
Zane only co-wrote and co-produced one song for Sam Smith and it wasn’t even a major hit song, it was an afterthought bonus song called Restart which was essentially a VERY simple drum pattern with a VERY simple bass line with a VERY simple chord progression that was probably banged out in a matter of a couple of minutes. NOTHING to even talk about.