“All right man, we’ve gotta kick this whole thing off at some point.”
Uttered just after 5pm UK time on the world’s first global, 24/7 radio station, Zane Lowe’s characteristically conversational opening bon mot might have found itself committed to history books, had listeners who tuned in early not heard 45 minutes of Brian Eno’s Music For Airports punctuated by Lowe and his producer wrestling with the studio equipment. Instead, the first words the Guardian hears on Beats 1 are: “Check! Check! Check!”
Lowe’s former Radio 1 listeners will not have been surprised by what followed: by the end of the first song – Spring King’s City – the ebullient broadcaster was singing along. That wasn’t the only familiar sound: Lowe’s former ”hottest record” slot is now called “the world record”. The first was an exclusive from Pharrell Williams, which Lowe claimed Williams supplied “out of the kindness of his heart” (Pharrell Williams also has a show on Beats 1).
Lowe played that Pharrell track twice in a row, a likeable gimmick he employed with select tunes on his old radio show, but it was strange to hear him explain to an international audience that “this is what I do”. It was rather endearing to this familiar, expert broadcaster also tell new listeners “I come from Auckland, New Zealand”, like a kid on his first day at big school.
In musical terms, the first hour of Lowe’s show was almost identical to his old slot, so there were few concessions to the less clued-in listeners who routinely put more commercial music at the top of Apple’s iTunes chart. Nashville band Bully’s single Trying was introduced as being ideal “if you love Wolf Alice” – Wolf Alice being a band who only released their debut album last week, and remain below the radar of most iTunes users.
So while Radio 1, whose controllers pride themselves on their specialist output, might feel slightly wary of Beats 1, there seems little on the schedule to worry a mainstream station such as Capital FM for now, at least. The first listeners Lowe welcomed to the show were “the early adopters”. Beats 1 is itself experimental: if it proves a success, Apple will roll out further stations.
“We’re Beats 1, we’re worldwide and, from now on, we’re always on,” Zane promised at the top of the show; Beat 1’s first hour on air, he added, was “not about fanfare – it’s about quality and consistency”.
Nevertheless, it felt celebratory and, apart from minor streaming glitches, like real radio. For listeners in Honolulu, the sound of Lowe hollering about Royal Blood might well have been a bit much for 6am, but on a sunny late afternoon in the UK Beats 1 made a lot of sense.
