Roger Fingas
Apple on Tuesday began officially broadcasting Beats 1, its live, worldwide Internet radio station built into the iOS 8.4 Music app intended to promote new artists and songs, enhancing discovery for music lovers.
The first broadcast was hosted by Los Angeles DJ Zane Lowe, who is scheduled to stay on the air until 2 p.m. Eastern. London's Julie Adenuga will come on at 3 p.m., while New York's Ebro Darden will take over at 6. The first celebrity show will be hosted by St. Vincent at 10.
To inaugurate the station, Lowe chose to play "City" by Manchester band Spring King. Next was the track "Dreams" by Beck, followed by "Gosh" from Jamie xx.
Beats 1 can be found through the Music app's Radio tab, and is free to all iOS listeners. Tapping on the Beats logo brings up daily schedule information. Support should reach Macs and PCs with a later iTunes update.
The service is set to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Beyond St. Vincent, some other celebrity shows will be hosted by Drake, Disclosure, Josh Homme, Pharrell Williams, and Elton John.
Update: Beats 1 suffered a brief outage Tuesday afternoon. Services were restored in less than an hour.
Chip Loder
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
66 Comments
I'm hearing lots of repeated scripts on loop here. Better smooth it out pronto guys!
I keep getting a 403 error not loading
I'm hearing lots of repeated scripts on loop here. Better smooth it out pronto guys!
This is something I don't like. Talk before the song, talk after, but don't talk DURING the song. Especially short little sound bites like "Always On".
Hopefully this is only during a short launch period (not the 90 days) and not permanent. Then again, I've never listened to Zane Lowe, so not sure if this is his thing or a Beats 1 thing.
For all the talk about Apple’s servers being unable to handle the onslaught I found the update to iOS 8.4 and the signup for Apple Music went quickly and without a hitch. It all took less than 30 minutes. Good job Apple!
I noticed a lot of the songs they're playing on Beats 1 aren't available on Apple Music yet. Grr...