June 30, 2015: Apple launches 24/7 radio station Beats 1. Part of Apple Music, Beats 1 features top DJs ranging from former BBC presenter Zane Lowe to top musical artists like Lil Wayne.
Apple calls Beats 1 “the biggest radio station in the world” and says it beats (no pun intended) all other music stations when it comes to concurrent listeners. However, without hard figures to back that up, some call out Cupertino on this claim.
Beats 1 launch brings 24/7 live music to Apple fans
As its name suggests, the origin of Beats 1 can be traced back to Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats in 2014. This gave Apple the music-themed brand and tech with which it started building the basis for Apple Music.
However, Zane Lowe — one of the first Beats 1 DJs — said the time frame for creating Beats 1 proved incredibly tight. The team, he said in interviews over the years, had just three months to “build Beats 1 from scratch.”
Unlike Apple Music, Beats 1 required no subscription to listen to. In theory, this opened it up to a massive audience, even if Apple never revealed the exact number of listeners. In 2020, Cupertino changed the station’s name to Apple Music 1 and launched two other radio stations: Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country. Apple Music 1 remains free for people who don’t subscribe to Apple Music.
Did Beats 1 change the game?
Lowe said early on that he was “not sure” how essential Beats 1 was to the overall Apple Music experience — although he hoped “there’s a place for it.”
In the years since its launch, Apple’s main radio station has continued to garner big-name interviews and celebrity hosts, particularly in the hip-hop world. (Lowe still hosts The Zane Lowe Show.)
But Apple also does relatively little to promote its radio stations. And the focus on them as a key differentiator for Apple Music seems to have gone the way of the streaming service’s controversial early focus on exclusives.
Do you listen to any of Apple’s radio stations? What do you think of them? Let us know in the comments below.
