User:AKA Casey Rollins/Drafts/Beats1

Beats1 is a 24/7 Music radio station owned and operated by Apple Inc. The station airs a mix of pop, rap and indie music. The marquee DJs include Zane Lowe, who left BBC Radio 1 to join Beats1, Ebro Darden, who hosts a Hip hop show, and Julie Adenuga, whose show focuses on music from Great Britain and the United Kingdom.

History
When Apple bought audio equipment maker Beats Electronics in 2014, Apple gained ownership of Beats' own service Beats Music,  and made Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers responsible for the iTunes Radio service. Business Insider later reported that Apple was planning to merge the two services together. Apple also hired noted British radio DJ Zane Lowe to serve as a music curator.

The day of Beats1's launch, The Guardian revealed that they had been given pre-recorded examples of Beats1 programming, and said it "suggests an eclectic mix of programming to fill the 24-hours-a-day of broadcasting."

On September 29th of 2015, Zane Low said he wasn't sure that Apple Music needed Beats1, but said "I hope that there’s a place for it."

In December of 2015, rumors spread that Apple Inc. would expand on the Beats1 brand and give it sister stations, after Apple registered trademarks for 4 additional Beat stations.

When Apple refreshed the Apple Music interface in 2016, Beats1 reportedly became harder to get to.

Reception
Reception for the Apple-run station has been mixed. Quartz (publication) analyzed the tracklist of songs that were aired on Beats1 in its second week. "Though Beats 1 is an eclectic mix of genres, some listeners have complained that it plays too much hip-hop." However, they did note that "there is a reasonable amount of diversity..."

Mashable complained of "dynamic-range compression, which squashes the volume range of audio" and also said "The variety can be a blessing and a curse...it jumps all over the musical spectrum...If I wasn't committed to listening to nothing but Beats 1 for this review, I would have turned it off."

9to5Mac had a generally positive review of the station, saying "Although Beats 1 is advertised as a 24/7 station, it isn’t really true. The schedule is set up on a 12 hour basis, so for the other 12 hours it plays a recording of the last 12 hours...This is frustrating for me, being based in the UK. If I listen in the afternoon and in the following morning, I am likely to hear the same shows repeated...In summary, Beats 1 as a concept is great... It needs some work on the software side and the production side to make it really shine."

Fortune (magazine) said "I haven’t liked every song played on Beats 1, but the personal bond I instantly felt with each DJ has been strong enough for me to resist the urge to go back to a lifeless algorithm."

The Verge had multiple writers listen to Beats1 over the course of 24 hours and write a daily blog on their experience. Emily Yoshida wrote " It's interesting that this is somehow more monoculture than terrestrial radio — your local Top 40 station will of course say that its music is "great," but it's primary mission is not to play "good" music, it's to play music that serves a certain demographic. There's not really a demographic for Beats 1 besides "musical omnivore...It's internet person music...It should be noted that Zane is still talking — nay, yelling — in between every single song." Rose Miller wrote " Darden's show has really felt live. There's impulsiveness and interactivity." Ben Popper had to wait 30 minutes to listen to Beats1 because of an outage. "If I wanted to subscribe to this show and get a push notification when St. Vincent was on the air, could I do that?" He complained. "If so, I can't tell how...there was just a plug about how Beats 1 is "always live" right after the DJ said they were about to replay Zane's show." Sam Byford wrote "So here we are at 1PM on a rainy Tokyo afternoon, and I'm listening to a radio show that aired 12 hours ago...The whole setup of Beats 1 is very Western hemisphere and Anglophone. Lowe keeps talking about the 100 hundred countries he's broadcasting to, but how many people can even understand what he's saying?" Amar Toor wrote "I appreciate what they're trying to do with 24/7, always-on radio, but part of me wonders whether it would've been more interesting if it was more US-centric...Wonder how much of the "radio experience" we'll lose with a radio station that has no real clock...I should note that I'm hearing a lot of this music for the first time, which I take as a sign of good DJing. But it still kind of sucks knowing that I'm listening to a repeat...Oh look, it's the Beats 1 countdown chart. Woo. Everyone loves charts. They go wild for them. Nothing gets the party started like numerical sequences. Sigh....in the words of disappointed clubgoers the world over, I'm just not really feeling it."

Billboard (magazine) writer said "the tech community has been heaping praise on Beats 1...Internet-savvy people have fallen head over heels for old-school monoculture."

Rob Price of Business Insider said "So far, I've loved it. I was never much of a radio listener before, and I've enjoyed the eclectic selection it has thrown up."