The Music Business’s No. 1 Fan

Zane Lowe, crucial music interviewer working at present, kicked his sneakers up onto his sofa cushions and started to cry.

For the earlier two hours, I’d been asking the 52-year-old world artistic director of Apple Music about issues dealing with the report business: rising fears about AI; broad discontent with streaming pay charges; the ambient suspicion that music doesn’t matter as a lot because it used to. Lowe is legendary for the high-energy earnestness he exhibits on his web radio present, the place he typically rains intricately worded reward down on artists whereas tossing in a growth sound impact for punctuation. He’d answered my questions with that very same jittery jolliness, however he appeared, finally, to wish to redirect the dialog—again to the facility of music itself.

He picked up the distant management for his workplace audio system and cued up a tune from the indie-folk artist Keaton Henson referred to as “You Don’t Know How Fortunate You Are.” The tune’s lyrics tenderly deal with a long-lost lover, and the music builds from quiet guitar harmonics to a rustling crescendo. As we listened largely in silence, Lowe laid again in his Peter Pan–inexperienced sweater, trying pained. “That’s the true stuff, man,” he mentioned when the tune was over, wiping tears from his eyes. “That’s the great shit. That’s why we do it!”

This emotional show helped reply the query I’d actually been pondering: how a Gen X DJ and former rapper from New Zealand grew to become the report business’s favourite influencer. At a time when social media permits artists to whittle the promotional cycle down to a couple Instagram posts and a Scorching Ones look, Lowe reliably books press-shy A-listers—Taylor Swift, Thom Yorke, Tyler the Creator—for in-depth exchanges that flow into broadly and outline the narrative round main releases. These conversations are likely to invert the ostensible function of celeb interviews. Quite than serve the general public’s curiosities, he mentioned, he needs to serve artists—to provide them “a spot for them to study a bit of bit extra about themselves.”

That chummy ethos is in every single place in cultural media today, particularly throughout podcasting, however Lowe—who was identified for his long-form chats with artists at BBC Radio 1 earlier than he joined Apple Music upon its launch in 2015—helped popularize it. “He’s largely chargeable for the brand new and relaxed method artists interview,” the pop singer Halsey informed me in an electronic mail. “When broadcast radio was beginning to decline and lengthy earlier than podcasts had taken over as the first supply of data sharing, there was Zane Lowe in a comfortable sweater saying ‘I’m your good friend, your fan, and I need you to inform me how you actually really feel.’” Although the conversations aren’t journalistic, they are often fairly revealing about craft and the artist’s interior life. Sampha, a soft-spoken alternative-pop singer, marveled to me in regards to the “endless faucet of perception” popping out of Lowe. “There’s all the time substance behind what he’s saying—even when he’s talking quick.”

Opinions amongst music listeners are extra combined. Many viewers rave in regards to the kindness Lowe extends to their favourite artists. However to others, he’s a cheerleader for the stagnant, idolatrous report business—somebody who’d somewhat give a fluffy praise than ask a urgent query. In a 2024 episode of the Pop Pantheon podcast, the critic DJ Louie XIV referred to as Lowe a “sycophant” operating the “pop-music equal of Fox Information.” Louie’s producer, Russ Martin, added, “It’s simply frankly not plausible that he likes each report and he likes each tune on each report.”

I take pleasure in Lowe’s work greater than that—he’s clearly good and sometimes amusing, and he cares a ton in regards to the artwork type. But I, too, have questioned about his sincerity: What sort of music geek doesn’t harbor some important opinions? However one colleague, the radio host Eddie Francis, informed me Lowe refuses to talk in poor health of artists even when off mic, even jokingly. One other, the Apple govt Oliver Schusser, who oversees music, informed me he couldn’t bear in mind Lowe disliking something whereas on the job—ever. His positivity is so dedicated that it virtually feels rooted in worry, as if our musical period would look, with out his boosting, fairly unhappy.

Industrial radio in New Zealand—as in lots of locations worldwide—was once managed by the federal government, which had decided that the general public curiosity was finest served by a food plan of classical music and climate studies. In 1966, Lowe’s father, a younger DJ, set out on a fishing boat with 5 buddies with a purpose to break that monopoly. Three miles off the coast of Auckland, in worldwide waters, the crew started broadcasting rock and roll to the mainland. The so-called pirate radio station was a part of a world “struggle for independence of style and communication for a technology,” Lowe mentioned.

However that thrilling life in broadcasting meant Lowe’s father was gone for a lot of his childhood. His dad and mom entered a chronic separation when he was younger, and Lowe coped by obsessing over songs and bands—a lot that his personal buddies discovered it grating. He requested himself the query that, he mentioned, he’s struggled with for many years: “Why does enthusiasm, a whole lot of assist, translate as overenthusiasm, or annoying, or cringe, or simply ingenuine?”

Lowe’s enthusiasm did show useful to his skilled aspirations—each as a rapper and beat maker (who contributed to hits which might be nonetheless thought-about classics of Kiwi hip-hop) and as a DJ climbing the ranks of music media domestically and overseas. Within the late ’90s, he moved to the UK and have become an MTV presenter. By 2003, he was anchoring BBC Radio 1’s vaunted nightly pop phase, the place he helped break acts akin to Adele and Arctic Monkeys. His Radio 1 present “was the sound of a technology” within the U.Ok., Christopher Tubbs, a DJ and longtime good friend of Lowe’s, informed me. “Tastemaker doesn’t fairly cowl it.”

However quickly, the thought of the tastemaker was being undermined. The launch of Spotify in 2008 meant that listeners may now hear virtually something they wished on demand, guided by personalised suggestion algorithms. Lowe’s fame was rising due to headline-making interviews with Kanye West, Jay-Z, and different rappers, however radio’s salience was declining. When Apple started working by itself streaming service, Lowe joined a star-studded management group that additionally included the report producer Jimmy Iovine and 9 Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor.

Apple had revolutionized music listening with iTunes and the iPod, however the firm was late to streaming. Reputationally, the tech was a threat; Spotify’s rise had triggered complaints from artists who felt like the brand new system’s ease and cheapness devalued their artwork. “The concept that everybody would have the identical jukebox within the sky, utterly digital, terrified a few of us,” Schusser mentioned. “Does it really make music a bit of bit like, I don’t know, faucet water?”

Apple’s reply to the perceived points with streaming was to market itself as a prestigious, boutique various to Spotify. The 2 providers are functionally equivalent in some ways, permitting customers to discover largely the identical pool of music utilizing largely the identical instruments. However simply as Apple TV has tried to compete with Netflix by funding intellectual dramas solid with film stars, Apple Music has invested in signifiers of old-school high quality—akin to human-curated radio stations.

Sitting on the wraparound sofa that circles the studio, I watched a parade of musicians come out and in all morning for 2 days in a row. The Ok-pop boy band Cortis arrived with an entourage of handlers and bopped round to their very own music; the trance DJ Armin van Buuren obtained stony-serious on the subject of his new, piano-only album. All through all of Lowe’s platitudes and boosterism, my consideration was rapt, and my thoughts by no means wandered. His continuous gush of questions, compliments, and observations creates spectacle within the method of a top-tier inspirational speaker.

Nonetheless, I questioned whom this spectacle was for. Lowe’s earlier employers, MTV and Radio 1, have been, at their top, important hubs for anybody making an attempt to plug into popular culture. Apple’s radio exhibits compete for ears with its streaming efforts, whose abundance has helped diminish the sense of a musical widespread floor. After I first began utilizing Apple Music in 2015, I shortly forgot about its radio tab—aside from when a clip of Lowe would cross my social feeds. His interviews are likely to get views on YouTube in proportion with the recognition of the featured artists; as for the radio present itself, all that Lowe would say about its attain is that it was rising. “Any artist will let you know proper now, the trick is looking for an viewers,” he mentioned.

The explanation it’s so tough is, after all, streaming and the eye financial system. Standing out is not only tougher than ever—the stakes are greater than ever as a result of, as Lowe put it, “there’s an imbalance within the financials” because of the small payouts per hear. “You possibly can work at an organization and be happy with the work we do and be part of this present mannequin—and nonetheless really feel like there’s issues that you just want have been completely different,” Lowe mentioned. “Two issues might be true.” The remark drove house that I’d been watching a deliberate anachronism: an try to deal with “faucet water” as artisanal, and to feign monoculture at an organization that had helped break it up.

Lowe, nonetheless, is with out apparent precedent. Celeb interviewers have all the time performed a promotional position and gotten cozy with their topics, but it surely’s exhausting to think about an era-defining interviewer who didn’t at the least have some chew. Kurt Loder? Nineties rockers withered underneath his jaded stare. Ryan Seacrest? He’s obtained that Hollywood-slick, smiling-but-shady factor occurring. Oprah? She’ll ask the questions individuals wish to know the solutions to.

The closest pioneer of Lowe’s technique is perhaps one who walked into the studio once I was there: the 68-year-old rock journalist and movie director Cameron Crowe, who was selling his memoir, The Uncool. “I believe we’re each individuals pleasers,” Lowe mentioned to him. “Would you agree?”

Crowe’s trajectory in rock journalism is a contemporary delusion because of his 2000 film, Nearly Well-known, which is predicated on the identical reminiscences that he writes about in The Uncool. Within the early ’70s, at simply 15 years outdated, Crowe began writing for Rolling Stone, which gave him the prospect to interview artists akin to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and the Allman Brothers Band. His position, he informed Lowe, was to be a fan: “Take the journey with that artist. In the event that they made an album that didn’t thrill you, don’t bail; keep it up.”

This strategy clashed with different individuals’s beliefs in regards to the occupation. The rock critic Lester Bangs as soon as warned Crowe towards changing into buddies with the musicians he covers. “These are individuals who need you to jot down sanctimonious tales in regards to the genius of rock stars,” he mentioned, in accordance with The Uncool. “And they’re going to damage rock and roll and strangle the whole lot we love about it, proper?” He later added, “It is best to make your popularity on being sincere, and unmerciful.” Bangs’s recommendation, repeated in Nearly Well-known, is a touchstone for music journalists—a reminder that being too light or beneficiant can destroy the very factor you’re masking.

However Lowe has adopted Crowe’s philosophy, not Bangs’s. He thanked Crowe for permitting “individuals like myself to be extra comfy in the truth that I don’t actually have a very sturdy important muscle.” Later, in his workplace, Lowe informed me that though critique is necessary, it’s not the position he was “born to inhabit.” At base, he needs his interviews to be “a doc for followers to cherish and watch over and again and again.”

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That aim neatly aligns with the report business’s shifting prerogatives. Music consumption has largely cleaved into two patterns: the passive, informal streamer who lets the algorithm serve up good-enough background listening, and the ultra-invested “stan,” who builds a fiercely rooted group id round their favourite artists. The brand new playbook for fulfillment isn’t making an attempt to enchantment broadly—it’s monetizing and remonetizing the eye of diehards.

Even so, I couldn’t assist however assume that he and Crowe held too rosy a view of what followers really need, particularly these days. For those who put a superfan in a room with their favourite artist, they aren’t solely going to flatter and fawn. They’re going to pry for data, irrespective of how awkwardly. At a press convention Woman Gaga held together with her followers this 12 months, for instance, the primary inquiry was a couple of spicy subject: her relationship with the rapper and infamous troll Azealia Banks, whom she had beefed with up to now.

Lowe’s job, nonetheless, isn’t merely to observe his curiosities, as a fan would possibly. “Simply being actually sincere—we work as a enterprise,” he mentioned. Cash isn’t exchanged within the reserving of interviews, however sure artists could also be priorities for Apple due to financial issues, akin to their potential for streaming success. “It’s not identical to, you understand, the Zane Lowe Present style playground,” he mentioned.

Artists can put preconditions on the interviews and “respectfully request that the dialog doesn’t stray into areas that is perhaps thought-about a bit too delicate,” Lowe mentioned. “I don’t thoughts that. I wish to know the place their spirit is.” They and their representatives additionally, from time to time, ask to provide enter on the ultimate edit.

He gestured to my voice recorder whereas explaining why he complied with such requests. “As someone who’s obsessive-compulsive, very conscious of desirous to be considerate with my thoughtfulness, I personally haven’t any downside giving any artist grace to be at their finest,” he mentioned. “And in doing so, the reality is, we get extra as a result of they belief us.” He added, “I’m not interviewing heads of state, proper?”

A few of his topics do, nonetheless, maintain statesmanlike affect. Swift, for instance, is so outstanding that Donald Trump commonly takes potshots at her—a truth no interviewer introduced up in her current press appearances. Lowe informed me he’d been allowed to ask no matter he wished, however the subject simply hadn’t occurred to him. “If I take into consideration What am I going to ask an artist like Taylor Swift in 10 minutes?, I may set sail onto the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat and be very directionless, very quick,” he mentioned. “That may be a sturdy tide of overthinking.”

Moreover, no interviewers had requested her why she issued greater than 30 completely different variations of her new album—a method that, by beckoning followers to purchase a number of copies, allowed her to promote a record-shattering 4 million copies in a single week. Many commentators have criticized her rollout technique as wasteful and exploitative, however Lowe noticed it as a artistic bid to do what musicians must do proper now: flip music into an occasion. He framed it as a win not just for Swift, however for the artwork type. “Isn’t it good to be in 2025, to know there are new milestones, new issues that music can obtain that it couldn’t earlier than?” he mentioned. “As a result of the opposite choice is backwards.”

One a part of his interview together with her had damaged floor, nonetheless. Lowe requested—amid a blizzard of rhetoric in regards to the significance of human connection—how Swift had been processing the general public response to The Lifetime of a Showgirl. “The rule of present enterprise is: If it’s the primary week of my album launch and you might be saying both my title or my album title, you’re serving to,” she replied. She added, later, “I’ve a whole lot of respect for individuals’s subjective opinions on artwork. I’m not the artwork police.” These quotes ricocheted across the web, taken as an indication that Swift was properly conscious of what number of followers and critics had panned the album. Lowe hadn’t talked about that combined reception, however he hadn’t wanted to. Celebrities might be as on-line as any of us—they know what their detractors assume.

It’s this actuality that Lowe and the brand new music-promo circuit attempt to guard towards. The background hum of digital life is negativity, polarization, and jaded disengagement; the report business craves a discussion board to pitch its narratives earlier than they’re torn to shreds in remark sections and mined for TikTok drama. A more healthy creative ecosystem wouldn’t—and up to now, didn’t—want the “secure place” that Lowe professes to supply.

That ecosystem appears unlikely to develop more healthy as expertise progresses. AI-generated songs have just lately begun flooding streaming providers; Spotify listeners can name upon a synthetic DJ to ship banter and commentary tailored for the consumer. After I introduced up AI to Lowe, it was the primary time I heard him categorical open contempt. “Go away the humanities alone, dude. Like, go and repair different shit,” he mentioned. Relating to the prospect of an AI hitmaker, he requested: “By the best way, how do I interview that individual?” His voice had been rising louder, often hitting a near-shout.

Minutes later, earlier than grabbing the distant management to play Keaton Henson’s tune, he clapped his palms and stared me straight within the eyes. “Music is magic,” he mentioned. “It guides us and helps us in moments subconsciously and consciously on a regular basis. It’s such an necessary a part of being human. It’s such an necessary a part of our expertise that I believe, with out which means to, we let it evaporate into the whole lot.”

By this level, the authenticity of his idealism was hardly unsure, however the anxious course of required to keep up it was changing into clearer. I didn’t have to be informed that music is magic; I’d by no means actually questioned it. Then I remembered what he’d informed me about interviews: They’re for the good thing about the topic.