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Zane Lowe Discusses Beats 1, Meeting Dr. Dre, Moving to Los Angeles and More

johngordon said:
Are people still peddling the "its all hip hop and rap" thing, even though show playlists and published stats are in the public domain that show otherwise?

Maybe checking out a few shows and seeing what sort of stuff gets played on them, rather than randomly tuning in and switching off again when you hear a song you don't like, might be the way to go.

And sure - even then I don't doubt that there still won't be anything that interests a lot of people. But enough already with the "its all rap and hip hop" cliche.
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I agree. Many people's complaints about Beats 1 are equivalent to turning on CBS seeing the NFL and then saying they hate CBS because they only show the NFL. After reading all the Beats 1 complaints about too much rap, I have been specifically looking for rap when I listen. What I've noticed is that there is a surprising small amount of rap unless one of the NYC DJs is on (one of the guys only played NYC rap for days - not that I mind).

The other thing that might be happening is people are calling any music they don't like or understand rap and hip hop.
 
Benjamin Frost said:
Are you allowed to be black and hate hiphop?

Please confirm thx.
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Wow, what a statement. You are insinuating that black people could/would only like hiphop/rap.

I'm black and have been a metalhead since 1988. Yes, there is some rap that I like (mainly old school, prior to 1992), but to imply that blacks only like one type of music is completely asinine.

BL.
 
bradl said:
Wow, what a statement. You are insinuating that black people could/would only like hiphop/rap.

I'm black and have been a metalhead since 1988. Yes, there is some rap that I like (mainly old school, prior to 1992), but to imply that blacks only like one type of music is completely asinine.

BL.
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Attitude much?

I asked an innocent question and was hoping for an innocent answer.

You're reading far more into my question than was there.
 
Anti-Pop Superhero said:
Most of the so called Hip Hop here and on other radio stations is commercial cookie cutter non-sense. There isn't that much actual Hip Hop being played on the radio. I was at the Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito 25th Anniversary concert yesterday, a show that represented actual Hip Hop not payola music which is mostly what you're hearing on beats1. I miss it dearly as well as the music.
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Someone's clearly not listening to Ebro or Q-Tip then.
 
I enjoy Zane Lowe's show on the rare occasion I listen to it, but like most people here have said, the prevalence of hip-hop (seriously, it's like 70% of what Beats1 plays) and repeat plugging of Dr Dre's music just puts me off.

edit: Oh and yep, within five minutes of tuning in, they play Dr Dre's music, again.
 
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But nowhere near 70%. And there are probably shows that play more hip hop than others. Ebro's show being the most obvious. So there will be a lot of shows that play hardly any hip hop.

I don't understand this thing people have had with beats 1 where they seem to look at the station as a whole, rather than take any time at all to look at what gets played on what shows. Maybe it depends on what people look for in a radio station - something to put on all the time, or something with particular shows / DJs that they think might be worth tuning in for, and not being bothered about other shows / DJs that they don't think will be.
 
johngordon said:
But nowhere near 70%. And there are probably shows that play more hip hop than others. Ebro's show being the most obvious. So there will be a lot of shows that play hardly any hip hop.

I don't understand this thing people have had with beats 1 where they seem to look at the station as a whole, rather than take any time at all to look at what gets played on what shows. Maybe it depends on what people look for in a radio station - something to put on all the time, or something with particular shows / DJs that they think might be worth tuning in for, and not being bothered about other shows / DJs that they don't think will be.
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That would be fine if they had some sort of catchup/podcast service. As it stands, they don't, so yeah I am looking for something I can just put on at any time of day and be able to listen to something interesting.
 
CJM said:
That would be fine if they had some sort of catchup/podcast service. As it stands, they don't, so yeah I am looking for something I can just put on at any time of day and be able to listen to something interesting.
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They do now - although its not as obvious as it might be.

If you go to the main Beats 1 page, and click on a DJ or show, then on Connect - there are replays of shows lurking in there. I think it would be better if they put the replays on the playlists tab, rather than mixed in with all the Connect stuff.

Although even from the off it seemed pretty obvious that Ebro's show would be more likely to play more hip hop than, say, Zane's show, or Josh Homme's show.
 
johngordon said:
But nowhere near 70%. And there are probably shows that play more hip hop than others. Ebro's show being the most obvious. So there will be a lot of shows that play hardly any hip hop.

I don't understand this thing people have had with beats 1 where they seem to look at the station as a whole, rather than take any time at all to look at what gets played on what shows. Maybe it depends on what people look for in a radio station - something to put on all the time, or something with particular shows / DJs that they think might be worth tuning in for, and not being bothered about other shows / DJs that they don't think will be.
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Well radio is for most people simple background music - no one in his right mind would turn to radio djs for any serious recommendations around here. Especially such hyper active ones as on Beats1
 
I've found plenty of great music through shows like Zane's on Radio 1 over the years. Are they not "serious recommendations"?

If so, what would make a recommendation a "serious recommendation"?
 
lunarworks said:
Gotta love logical fallacies.

Outside of Japan, and weebs, J-pop doesn't have much of an appeal. Just like outside of America, country music means ****-all. Beats 1 is going for music that has as wide of a global appeal as possible.

Of course it's not going to be music everyone loves, you can't please everyone, but it's going to be music that enough people in enough countries love. Along with that, they're trying to squeeze in new and different music to introduce to people. Maybe, just maybe, your favourite music might make an appearance on one of the artist-curated shows.
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Isn't Beats1 and :apple:music supposed to introduce new music and genres to your ears? I might like j-pop of country if I was introduced to it.
It's about exposure to new things, You might like Grindcore or djent if you were exposed to it.
At the moment, they do not give the listeners the full gamut of listening types - regardless of global appeal.
 
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rctlr said:
Isn't Beats1 and :apple:music supposed to introduce new music and genres to your ears? I might like j-pop of country if I was introduced to it.
It's about exposure to new things
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That's why I smirked at Zane Lowe going all hot and bothered about 5 Seconds Of Summer. Next week he might discover Miley Cyrus. Imagine the possibilities!

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/08/here-are-the-most-played-artists-on-beats-1

"Beats 1 has something that is rare in the world of digital music: scarcity. Listeners can’t choose a song and play it over and over. (They can do that elsewhere on Apple Music.) But curation doesn’t mean songs aren’t repeated. We counted 12,445 tracks but only 3,371 unique songs, meaning each track was played an average of 3.7 times. Eighteen of the 20 songs in the table above were played over 50 times."

Out of the list quoted in the article I don't know four acts: Wolf Alice, Vince Staples, Jack Garratt and Halsey. I'm 37 years old. My taste ranges from mainstream pop to thrash metal, from trip hop and R&B to new wave and electro. The top 20 has two acts I actually enjoy listening to: Tame Impala and Florence + The Machine. All the others I know in a negative way, as in "I heard this and hated it enough to remember the performer's name". To me, curation + discovery should mean that indie acts with small following get a lot of love and get introduced to the general public. If I want to listen to Drake, Kendrick Lamar or Major Lazer it's enough to go to the mall without headphones. Hell, my gym's "curated playlist" exposed me to Major Lazer's "Lean On" today*. Similarly to the For You playlist and all of Apple Music, Beats One promised a lot, then turned out to be just another contender in a large crowd.

And yes, I know, I'm not their demographic, I can always listen to something else, I just don't get it, I'm too young, I'm too old, I don't listen to Beats One enough, Apple knows better than I do, who am I to talk about The Zane Lowe like that, etc. Just saying it before others do. :)

* No, they were not playing Beats One, because nobody talked over the music.
 
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To be fair its pretty much impossible to play something of everything.

But they have definitely played - but quite some margin - far more variety than you would hear on a mainstream commercial station.

I've heard a few tracks from around the world that mainstream commercial stations would never play in a million years.
navaira said:
That's why I smirked at Zane Lowe going all hot and bothered about 5 Seconds Of Summer. Next week he might discover Miley Cyrus. Imagine the possibilities!

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/08/here-are-the-most-played-artists-on-beats-1

"Beats 1 has something that is rare in the world of digital music: scarcity. Listeners can’t choose a song and play it over and over. (They can do that elsewhere on Apple Music.) But curation doesn’t mean songs aren’t repeated. We counted 12,445 tracks but only 3,371 unique songs, meaning each track was played an average of 3.7 times. Eighteen of the 20 songs in the table above were played over 50 times."

Out of the list quoted in the article I don't know four acts: Wolf Alice, Vince Staples, Jack Garratt and Halsey. I'm 37 years old. My taste ranges from mainstream pop to thrash metal, from trip hop and R&B to new wave and electro. The top 20 has two acts I actually enjoy listening to: Tame Impala and Florence + The Machine. All the others I know in a negative way, as in "I heard this and hated it enough to remember the performer's name". To me, curation + discovery should mean that indie acts with small following get a lot of love and get introduced to the general public. If I want to listen to Drake, Kendrick Lamar or Major Lazer it's enough to go to the mall without headphones. Hell, my gym's "curated playlist" exposed me to Major Lazer's "Lean On" today*. Similarly to the For You playlist and all of Apple Music, Beats One promised a lot, then turned out to be just another contender in a large crowd.

And yes, I know, I'm not their demographic, I can always listen to something else, I just don't get it, I'm too young, I'm too old, I don't listen to Beats One enough, Apple knows better than I do, who am I to talk about The Zane Lowe like that, etc. Just saying it before others do. :)

* No, they were not playing Beats One, because nobody talked over the music.
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I think there are a few flaws in your argument though.

If the time period is about five weeks, then a track being played 50 times in 35 days isn't exactly heavy rotation like you would get on popular commercial radio where you would easily hear the same track several times a day, and play nowhere near 3,000+ songs in a five week period.

In that respect Apple Music is clearly better than populist commercial radio (at least in the UK, and I suspect in the US). So to try and make out its credibility and diversity of music is shot with your cheap shots about 5SOS and Miley Cyrus are completely misplaced.

People with a good interest in music will likely have heard of a good few on that list, but I know for a fact that a lot of people in my age group would probably only have heard of Florence, Disclosure and maybe a few others. (I'm slightly older - 44). But even someone like yourself (with an above average interest in music for your age) still found new stuff amongst the most often played artists.

And even then - so what? They are the most played artists, and they're not exactly One Direction and Katy Perry etc. Those sorts of artists are probably a good bridge between the most mainstream stuff and the more new or obscure stuff, of which there is plenty on Beats 1.

You say discovery should mean that indie acts with small following get a lot of love and get introduced to the general public, then there is plenty of that - at least on Zane's show. A throwaway comment about 5SOS doesn't change that.

Its a format that has worked well in the UK on Radio 1 for years - mostly popular chart stuff during the day, and specialist stuff in the evenings, with new stuff from the evenings spilling over to the daytime shows.

That's how people get exposed to new stuff - when it mixes in with stuff they already know. If its all new, unknown stuff then it becomes too niche and a bit of a backwater that most people wouldn't be interested in listening to.
 
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You're making some good points. However –

johngordon said:
That's how people get exposed to new stuff - when it mixes in with stuff they already know. If its all new, unknown stuff then it becomes too niche and a bit of a backwater that most people wouldn't be interested in listening to.
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...in my case that's "stuff I already know and dislike". Tastes differ etc. Or I'm holding it wrong (by which I mean there are shows I would enjoy but I never tried Beats 1 at the time they are on air).
 
navaira said:
You're making some good points. However –

...in my case that's "stuff I already know and dislike". Tastes differ etc. Or I'm holding it wrong (by which I mean there are shows I would enjoy but I never tried Beats 1 at the time they are on air).
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That's the trouble with music - everyone has different tastes, and there is so much variety of music out there, that its simply impossible to please everyone.

But I still think Beats 1 is doing a pretty good job compared to mainstream commercial radio in that it is clearly playing a wider variety of stuff, and a lot of stuff away from the pop / charts or old classics that are the mainstay of most mainstream commercial radio.

That you or I might be familiar with a lot of it, and know we don't like it, doesn't make it a bad station per se.

I'd much rather Beats 1 was doing its thing, and I didn't like it, than it be a clone of existing mainstream commercial stations that I don't like.

As it is, being familiar with Zane from Radio 1, his show is exactly what I hoped it would be, i.e. virtually identical to his old R1 show.
 
@johngordon remember there is no evening in beats1.
It's noon somewhere in the world.

If it's going to be a promotional platform for the streaming service and store I think they need to say so because that's what it's feeling like, not a platform to experience new music and support unsigned and new artists. It really does not feel like that.
 
rctlr said:
@johngordon remember there is no evening in beats1.
It's noon somewhere in the world.

If it's going to be a promotional platform for the streaming service and store I think they need to say so because that's what it's feeling like, not a platform to experience new music and support unsigned and new artists. It really does not feel like that.
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Sure - when I talked about daytime / evening on R1, it was more about the mixing of stuff people know, with stuff they don't.

So on Beats 1 it still works a bit like that - tune in to something like Zane's show and you can hear a good mix of well known, but not charty pop, better known, but things that would have once been new on the show like Florence + The Machine who came up through BBC Introducing, and new stuff that isn't that well known at all, yet.

Zane's show certainly sounds like place to experience new music and support new artists - that's what it did on R1, and his show on Beats is basically identical to that.
 
Benjamin Frost said:
Attitude much?

I asked an innocent question and was hoping for an innocent answer.

You're reading far more into my question than was there.
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Actually, no, not attitude. Just a big case of closed mindedness in your post.

Yes, rap/hiphop is prevalent here in the US. You're in London. How many blacks there are only listening to rap/hiphop? Especially when the UK (and I'll even rope in Ireland) have given us acts such as Thin Lizzy, Roachford, and Evile (thrash metal band from Huddersfield) whose bassist was black.

But when you have such acts as Living Colour, and the Al Joseph Band playing hard rock/prog rock, their music speaks for themselves.

My point: colour of skin does not nor should ever indicate a person's musical states, even if a certain genre of music originated within that person's culture.

BL.
 
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