Zane Lowe departs BBC for Apple

Jay Z and Zane Lowe. Photo: Rapradar

A few days ago, ex-pat Kiwi Zane Lowe announced he is leaving BBC Radio One and moving to Los Angeles, to work in a new role with Apple. He talked with The Guardian about that shift.

'.. What is missing in the modern music world, he suggests, is the great sense of community that can rise up around a record shop or a radio station. “I really want a platform for the most passionate people who love music,” he says. “I want to be able to bring that human experience, that we all had growing up with record stores, but actually make it something you can listen to in a world where you’re left to your own devices.” He stops, drags his hands down his face.

“Does that make sense?” he wonders. “It hasn't really sunk in.”

....When Lowe moved to London in 1997 he found a job at the Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill ... “It’s so funny how it changes,” he says. “I was that person a few years back who lamented how the music world was changing, who said, ‘Oh it’s not the same as it used to be when you used to go into a record store and have a conversation with the guy at counter.’ But all it is is just a process of letting go. And you get over the hill and you go, ‘It’s better here’.”

'... The Saturday before the Grammys, Lowe is sitting in a hotel room not far from Sunset Strip in Hollywood, halfway through a bottle of beer. He is here to attend the awards for the first time as a nominee – included for his production work on the debut album by Sam Smith (who will, the following day, win four of his six nominations). But the trip is also an opportunity for the DJ and his wife Kara, who have two children – Jackson, eight, and Lucius, six – to begin house-hunting in the city that currently strikes him as “just a big fancy showbiz Auckland”.