Beats 1 is a key part of Apple Music, the service launching next week on June 30. The 24-hour live global music station has a trio of star DJs at the helm, including Zane Lowe, BBC alum who is helming Beats 1’s launch. Lowe took to Twitter to reveal that Eminem would be his first guest on the show, representing a pretty substantial ‘get’ for the station’s inaugural programming.
The way Beats 1 is going to work is by offering a steady stream of hits, which everyone in the world is tuning into simultaneously. The mix is going to be a selection of the “latest and best,” but it’ll be interesting to see what kinds of genres they include in the mix, and whether they stick to relatively safe mainstream shores or venture outside of that comfort zone.
Programming will include live and recorded interviews, conducted from three global studios including one in LA, one in New York and one in London. Lowe is joined by Ebro Darden and Julie Adenuga as full-time DJs, and the service also promises a rotating collection of guest DJs and other special content – they aren’t each just settling in for three sequential 8-hour shifts, in other words.
Eminem makes sense as a launch guest, given that a big part of Apple Music, and especially Beats 1, is probably Apple’s Beats acquisition, including talent relationships managed through Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. The features and specials presented on Beats 1 seem like they could offer a key differentiator for Apple’s service, provided they can indeed appeal to an extremely broad audience of potential listeners.