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3 0 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 7 | SXSW.COM The Beats Go On For DJ Zane Lowe By JasoN coheN Have radio and record companies' ideas about taste always been more narrow than listeners' actual preferences? They were the gatekeepers, and now it seems like the walls have fallen down. That's why we've all decided to curate our own lives. If you're taking a look at a small list of records and think 'this is going to satisfy our audience,' you're missing the point. Because the audience out there, they love music, and they're hungry. They're deep diving on free sites looking for stuff that's never been picked up or released yet. And more artists are going independent and handling their own business, realizing they can reach their audience directly. It's wide-open, and what we're trying to do is keep pace and provide a trustworthy force that believes in that and wants to play as much music as we possibly can. Did you design your job, or are you doing what Apple interviewed you to do? I guess I did design the job. They were looking for potential DJs who might want to be involved in this sort of radio idea that Trent Reznor, Larry Jackson and Jimmy Iovine had. As that progressed, they sort of said, we're looking for a cre- ative director to help define what it is, and visually what it could be. We're really lucky: Apple has never pulled the reins and said, 'You guys are going too far out there.' We take risks … the riskier the better in some respects. Is there still a role for regional scenes in a global digital world? That's where it all begins! We're listening to what's moving in the U.K., and we're saying, 'oh wow, that's really exciting. I wonder if anyone cares about that in Australia?' We're constantly searching. We're in a situation where we can cher- ry-pick the most exciting shit and reach corners of the globe really effectively and really easily. So how different is it programming for a worldwide audience? There are big challenges. How do you pro- gram a livestream when you're dealing with all different time zones and different countries and different languages? We're in cities and towns that I've never heard of, and time zones that are asleep when I'm awake and awake when I'm asleep. When you're only dealing with one time zone, city or town, you know what works best when and where on the schedule. But, we're in a different place. Those chal- lenges actually helped to really refine the mission statement. We want to create a community experience and make music the event … to create a place where we could all talk about it at the same time. Z ane Lowe is a music fan just like the rest of us, albeit a music fan who also has a Grammy (for co-writing and co-producing Sam Smith's "Restart"), will present a live DJ set at this summer's Governor's Ball Festival and bears as much responsibility as anyone for determining where digital music and music streaming might go next. After a decade-plus at the BBC's Radio 1, Lowe became the creative director of Apple Music's Beats 1 in 2015. In addition to hosting his own show, conducting artist interviews and taking a lead role in programming the station, Lowe spends a lot of his time lining up artists to do their own thing on Beats 1. "We're as insatiable as the audiences," he says. "If you don't like music, then we're not for you." Lowe recently shared his insights on his job and the music world, at large: Zane Lowe, photo courtesy of Apple You worked at the Music & Video Exchange in London before you started DJing at XFM. Even with all the changes in the music business and in technology, the fundamentals of discovery aren't that different, are they? That's exactly right! That sense of rec- ommendation that you got from people that you respected. That idea of being able to rifle through a record bin. That feeling that you're part of a community, and that you can get a recommendation from someone standing next to you in the hip-hop aisle, or from someone across the counter. All that stuff still exists. It's just a new place for it. We want to create that experience in the digital age. And pop changes shape all the time! When Skrillex came out, he spent a year touring, people were talking about him, he had an underground buzz, then he won a bunch of Grammys, and then that sound, which just seemed unlistenable to a lot of people when it first happened, it just became everywhere! Pop had changed shape. And last year, pop changed shape again ... all of sudden it was dark and weird. The Weeknd's "The Hills" being like a mas- sive radio record here in America; that's a HARD fucking record … distorted, and uncompromising, and lyrically it's really on the edge, and yet, you couldn't get it off the radio. So pop changes shape all the time. And I would much rather go along and be sur- prised than try to make pop work for me, or for our station, or play what our ver- sion of pop is. How are we ever going to have any fun if we play what we think is pop? I'd rather learn that lesson myself! Zane Lowe is a 2017 SXSW Confer- ence Keynote (Music).

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