Entertainment
Why Zane Lowe and Apple Music are betting on live radio in an on-demand era
In 2015, Zane Lowe left his job as a DJ on the BBC’s venerable Radio 1 in the U.K. to become the principal voice of a new digital radio station at the music-streaming service launched that year by Apple. Among his duties: an hour-long show beamed live from Los Angeles every weekday starting at 9 a.m. Pacific time.
A decade later, Lowe is a fixture of pop music around the globe: a relentlessly upbeat tastemaker-turned-cheerleader whose touchy-feely interviews with the biggest names on the charts draw audiences in the millions on Apple Music and YouTube. Which means he probably could move his show to a more comfortable hour if he wanted to.
“What’s more comfortable than 9 a.m.?” asks Lowe, who still gets up Monday through Friday and schleps to Apple’s Culver City studios to spin records and chat up pop stars on the platform’s flagship Apple Music 1 station. “I can’t sleep past 6 anyway, man. I get up, do some boxing and I’m f— ready. Gimme a coffee, get me on the air, I’m stoked.”
Even — or especially — in an age of on-demand entertainment, Lowe, 51, is bullish on the promise of live radio. “Music sounds different to me in that room than it does anywhere else,” he says of his spot behind the console. “I love the idea of being able to alter the energy of whatever’s going on in people’s lives in different time zones with one song.”
Apple shares his enthusiasm. Last month the tech giant expanded its radio offerings — in addition to Apple Music 1, it already had Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country — with three new stations: Apple Música Uno, a Latin-music channel; the dance-focused Apple Music Club; and Apple Music Chill, which the company calls “an escape, a refuge, a sanctuary in sound” and which features input from the ambient-music pioneer Brian Eno. Each runs 24 hours a day with programming hosted by a mix of veteran radio personalities and musicians such as Becky G and Stephan Moccio.
“The reason we started radio was because we want to be a place where culture happens, where parties are starting, where artists come and get to have a safe space to talk about why they made certain music,” says Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of music and sports. “And that’s more important today than it ever was.”
Cupertino-based Apple — whose music-streaming service counts 93 million subscribers, according to Business of Apps — wouldn’t specify how many people listen to its radio stations. “We’re not a numbers kind of company,” Schusser says — one advantage of being part of a corporation routinely described as the world’s most valuable.
Yet Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst at Midia Research, says Apple Music’s investment in radio “isn’t just some experiment they can throw money at because they’re Apple.” At a moment when the growth of digital streaming has slowed, the stations are a way for Apple Music to distinguish itself from competitors like Spotify — the clear industry leader with 640 million users — and Amazon Music. (Unlike Apple, Spotify offers a free ad-supported plan.)
“If you think about the past decade of streaming, it’s been characterized by a complete lack of differentiation, where all these platforms had the same interface and the same catalog,” Cirisano says of the format that now accounts for 84% of recorded music revenues. “But that’s not enough to compete anymore because we’re running out of potential new subscribers.” To lure customers, Spotify has gone big on podcasts and audiobooks. Live radio, Cirisano says, “adds some scarcity to the marketplace. And live entertainment experiences” — think of the splashy deals Netflix has struck recently with the NFL and WWE — “are sort of the last scarce entertainment experience now that everything is available on demand.”
Natalie Eshaya, who oversees Apple Music Radio, says the new stations reflect the platform’s broader commitment to bringing “a human touch” to the streaming ecosystem. It’s a framing that seems intended to draw a contrast with Spotify, which in 2023 introduced a DJ-like feature controlled by artificial intelligence and which last month drew widespread criticism for incorporating AI into its popular year-end Wrapped promotion. At Apple, Eshaya says, “We choose the music and we curate the programming — that’s been the moral compass since Day 1.”
Ebro Darden, right, talks with Jennifer Lopez on Apple Music 1 in New York in 2024.
(Tomas Herold / Getty Images for Apple Music)
In addition to Lowe, Apple Music Radio features broadcasting pros like Ebro Darden, who also hosts a morning show on New York’s Hot 97; Nadeska Alexis, who came up through MTV and Complex; and Evelyn Sicairos, formerly of Univision. (Before she joined Apple in 2015, Eshaya worked as a producer on Ryan Seacrest’s morning show on L.A.’s KIIS-FM.) But Lowe, who also holds the title of global creative director — and who recently stepped in for James Corden as host of a special holiday edition of “Carpool Karaoke” — is clearly Apple Music’s guiding personality.
Born and raised in New Zealand, he made music himself before going into radio and reckons it’s his artistic temperament that allows him to connect intimately on the air with stars such as Adele, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny. “I speak the artist language,” Lowe says in his office in Culver City. “I think most artists would probably go, ‘Yeah, he gets it.’ ” Curled on a sofa wedged into the corner of the dimly lighted room, he’s dressed in his customary baggy jeans and sweater and wears a pair of stylish geometric glasses. “And I like working at a company that rewards that,” he adds.
What Lowe views as his empathy with musicians — “The trust that artists have in him is kind of iconic,” Eshaya says — is seen by some as a level of deference in his interviews that can border on obsequiousness. “I’m aware of the fact that some people feel I’m overly positive or I’m not critical enough,” he says. “But I just don’t think that’s my job. There are certain things that artists may feel are sensitive — could be personal, could be a tragedy in their life, could be something they’re not willing to talk about — and I don’t necessarily feel like I have a responsibility to get that information or that they have an obligation to give it to me.”
Does he think of himself as a journalist?
“No, I actually don’t,” Lowe says. “I have an opportunity to spend an hour with an amazing artist, and I really want it to be the most beautiful human experience I can have.” When Katy Perry went on Lowe’s show in September to promote her album “143” — a would-be comeback LP that earned some of last year’s harshest reviews — he told her the new music was “such a gift” and that she’d reclaimed her role as “the Katy Perry that everybody loves”; more to the point, he declined to ask Perry about her controversial decision to reunite with the producer Dr. Luke after she’d earlier parted ways with him in the wake of Kesha’s allegations that he’d sexually assaulted her. (Kesha and Luke reached a settlement in 2023.)
“I did the best I could in the environment that I was in to have that conversation. We both enjoyed each other’s company, and her fans seemed to like it,” Lowe says. “In that moment, given the timing of the music and where we were and how quickly it was all happening, it’s not something that we landed on.”
Schusser pushes back on the idea that Lowe avoids tough questions, citing a 2020 interview with Justin Bieber in which the pop star tearfully discussed his history of self-destructive behavior. “I’m pretty sure that Justin’s publicist would not have wanted the conversation to go the way it went,” Schusser says. Yet it’s common knowledge in the music industry that, after Lowe conducts a prerecorded interview (as opposed to one he does live), an artist and/or their reps are welcome to request cuts — not exactly protocol even within the often-chummy world of celebrity journalism.
Then again, as Lowe himself points out, he doesn’t work for a news operation. “I’m in a streaming service where we’re trying to get more people to listen to music,” says the married father of two teenage sons. “My job is to help a business be healthy.” Darden, who’s known on Hot 97 as an aggressive interviewer, says that “on Apple, I try to create more space for the art and more grace for the artist” than in the more pressurized realm of terrestrial radio.
“People are listening to Hot in their cars, and they’ve got very limited time,” he says of his morning gig. “You stepped into the room, we got to get to it. Start the chainsaw, you know what I mean?”
To musicians planning an album rollout — many of whom already regard interviews with traditional journalists as an unnecessary risk in the era of social media — a friendly chat on Apple Music Radio might represent a safer way to reach an audience disinclined to worry about the finer points of how (and why) pop-star content is created.
“I can’t repair any relationships between A and B — I can only do what’s required when they want C,” Lowe says of the way musicians interact with legacy media and with him. “I can’t do someone else’s role just because they don’t get to do it, and I have access.”
And what’s the incentive to do something else? Schusser isn’t exaggerating by much when he says, “Every artist on the planet that has a new project — whether it’s an album, a song, a tour, a collaboration — they’re all coming to us.” Apple’s coziness with musicians, which it facilitates in part by paying a higher royalty rate per stream than Spotify, has always been crucial to its brand: In Apple Music’s early days, the service brokered deals for exclusive access to albums by Frank Ocean, Drake and Chance the Rapper; among the other stars with radio shows on the platform today are Summer Walker, Rauw Alejandro, Jamie xx, Hardy and Elton John, who’s hosted “Rocket Hour” since 2015.
“Most companies that work in streaming are technology companies — they don’t really care about music,” Schusser says. “If it’s books or podcasts or something else, it’s just bits and bytes. We’re a music company, and we have no intention to add other things into our music experience.” (One thing Apple is planning in the next few years, according to the exec: upgrading its studios in cities including L.A., Nashville, Berlin and Paris so that the company can produce small ticketed events.)
“Music doesn’t get event-ized enough” in the streaming economy, Lowe says. “It gets released mostly at the same time, then it fights for itself, and it’s really hard because there’s a lot to fight against. This is easily the cheesiest thing I can tell you, but music is incredibly special. Putting an hour or two hours of radio together to create a mood — it sends a message that it’s worth showing up for.”
Entertainment
House committee report questions distribution of FireAid’s $100 million for L.A. wildfire relief
The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released a report after its own investigation into FireAid, the charity founded by Clippers executives that raised $100 million for wildfire relief efforts in Los Angeles last January.
The investigation — led by Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) under committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — began in August when Kiley “sent a letter to FireAid requesting a detailed breakdown of all non-profits that received money from FireAid.” Kiley expressed concern that the money had gone toward local nonprofits rather than as more direct aid to affected residents.
FireAid promptly released a comprehensive document detailing its fundraising and grant dispersals. After reaching out to every named nonprofit in the document, The Times reported that the groups who successfully applied for grants were quickly given money to spend in their areas of expertise, as outlined in FireAid’s public mission statements. A review conducted by an outside law firm confirmed the same.
The new Republican-led committee report is skeptical of the nonprofit work done under FireAid’s auspices — but cites relatively few examples of groups deviating from FireAid’s stated goals.
Representatives for FireAid did not immediately respond to request for comment on the report.
Out of hundreds of nonprofits given millions in FireAid funds, “In total, the Committee found six organizations that allocated FireAid grants towards labor, salaries, or other related costs,” the report said.
The committee singled out several local nonprofits, focused on relief and development for minorities and marginalized groups, for criticism. It named several long-established organizations like the NAACP Pasadena, My Tribe Rise, Black Music Action Coalition, CA Native Vote Project and Community Organized Relief Efforts (CORE), whose activities related to fire relief they found “unclear,” without providing specific claims of misusing FireAid funds.
The report — while heavily citing Fox News, Breitbart and New York Post stories — claims that “FireAid prioritized and awarded grants to illegal aliens.” Yet its lone example for this is a grant that went to CORE, citing its mission for aiding crisis response within “underserved communities,” one of which is “undocumented migrants” facing “high risk of housing instability, economic hardship, exploitation, and homelessness.”
The report said that $500,000 was used by the California Charter Schools Assn., Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, LA Disaster Relief Navigator, Community Clinic Assn. of Los Angeles County and LA Conservation Corps “towards labor, salaries, or other related costs,” which the committee said went against FireAid’s stated goals.
Yet the examples they cite as suspicious include NLSLA using its FireAid grant to pay salaries to attorneys providing free legal aid to fire victims, the Community Clinic of Los Angeles “expanding training in mental health and trauma care” through grants to smaller local health centers, and the L.A. Regional Food bank allocating its funds to “mobilize resources to fight hunger.”
The report singled out one group, Altadena Talks Foundation, from Team Rubicon relief worker Toni Raines. Altadena Talks Foundation received a $100,00 grant from FireAid, yet the report said Altadena Talks’ work on a local news podcast, among other efforts, “remains unclear” as it relates to fire relief.
The report’s claims that “instead of helping fire victims, donations made to FireAid helped to fund causes and projects completely unrelated to fire recovery, including voter participation for Native Americans, illegal aliens, podcast shows, and fungus planting” sound incendiary. Yet the evidence it cites generally shows a range of established local nonprofits addressing community-specific concerns in a fast-moving disaster, with some small amounts of money possibly going toward salaries or overhead, or groups whose missions the committee viewed skeptically.
FireAid still plans to distribute an additional round of $25 million in grants this year.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: A Home Invasion turns into a “Relentless” Grudge Match
I’d call the title “Relentless” truth in advertising, althought “Pitiless,” “Endless” and “Senseless” work just as well.
This new thriller from the sarcastically surnamed writer-director Tom Botchii (real name Tom Botchii Skowronski of “Artik” fame) begins in uninteresting mystery, strains to become a revenge thriller “about something” and never gets out of its own way.
So bloody that everything else — logic, reason, rationale and “Who do we root for?” quandary is throughly botched — its 93 minutes pass by like bleeding out from screwdriver puncture wounds — excruciatingly.
But hey, they shot it in Lewiston, Idaho, so good on them for not filming overfilmed Greater LA, even if the locations are as generically North American as one could imagine.

Career bit player and Lewiston native Jeffrey Decker stars as a homeless man we meet in his car, bearded, shivering and listening over and over again to a voice mail from his significant other.
He has no enthusiasm for the sign-spinning work he does to feed himself and gas up his ’80s Chevy. But if woman, man or child among us ever relishes anything as much as this character loves his cigarettes — long, theatrical, stair-at-the-stars drags of ecstacy — we can count ourselves blessed.
There’s this Asian techie (Shuhei Kinoshita) pounding away at his laptop, doing something we assume is sketchy just by the “ACCESS DENIED” screens he keeps bumping into and the frantic calls he takes suggesting urgency of some sort or other.
That man-bunned stranger, seen in smoky silhoutte through the opaque window on his door, ringing the bell of his designer McMansion makes him wary. And not just because the guy’s smoking and seems to be making up his “How we can help cut your energy bill” pitch on the fly.
Next thing our techie knows, shotgun blasts are knocking out the lock (Not the, uh GLASS) and a crazed, dirty beardo homeless guy has stormed in, firing away at him as he flees and cries “STOP! Why are you doing this?”
Jun, as the credits name him, fights for his PC and his life. He wins one and loses the other. But tracking his laptop and homeless thug “Teddy” with his phone turns out to be a mistake.
He’s caught, beaten and bloodied some more. And that’s how Jun learns the beef this crazed, wronged man has with him — identity theft, financial fraud, etc.
Threats and torture over access to that laptop ensue, along with one man listing the wrongs he’s been done as he puts his hostage through all this.
Wait’ll you get a load of what the writer-director thinks is the card our hostage would play.
The dialogue isn’t much, and the logic — fleeing a fight you’ve just won with a killer rather than finishing him off or calling the cops, etc. — doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny.
The set-piece fights, which involve Kinoshita screaming and charging his tormentor and the tormentor played by Decker stalking him with wounded, bloody-minded resolve are visceral enough to come off. Decker and Kinoshita are better than the screenplay.
A throw-down at a gas-station climaxes with a brutal brawl on the hood of a bystander’s car going through an automatic car wash. Amusingly, the car-wash owners feel the need to do an Idaho do-si-do video (“Roggers (sic) Car Wash”) that plays in front of the car being washed and behind all the mayhem the antagonists and the bystander/car owner go through. Not bad.
The rest? Not good.
Perhaps the good folks at Rogers Motors and Car Wash read the script and opted to get their name misspelled. Smart move.

Rating: R, graphic violence, smoking, profanity
Cast: Jeffrey Decker, Shuhei Kinoshita
Credits:Scripted and directed by Tom Botchii.. A Saban Entertainment release.
Running time: 1:34
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Entertainment
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas breaks out in ‘Sentimental Value.’ But she isn’t interested in fame
One of the most moving scenes in Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” happens near the end. During an intense moment between sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who have both had to reckon with the unexpected return of their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), Agnes suddenly tells Nora, “I love you.” In a family in which such direct, vulnerable declarations are rare, Agnes’ comment is both a shock and a catharsis.
The line wasn’t scripted or even discussed. Lilleaas was nervous about spontaneously saying it while filming. But it just came out.
“[In] Norwegian culture, we don’t talk so much about what we’re feeling,” explains Lilleaas, who lives in Oslo but is sitting in the Chateau Marmont lounge on a rainy afternoon in mid-November. If the script had contained that “I love you” line, she says, “It would’ve been like, ‘What? I would never say that. That’s too much.’ But because it came out of a genuine feeling in the moment — I don’t know how to describe it, but it was what I felt like I would want to say, and what I would want my own sister to know.”
Since its Cannes premiere, “Sentimental Value” has been lauded for such scenes, which underline the subtle force of this intelligent tearjerker about a frayed family trying to repair itself. And the film’s breakthrough performance belongs to the 36-year-old Lilleaas, who has worked steadily in Norway but not often garnered international attention.
Touted as a possible supporting actress Oscar nominee, Lilleaas in person is reserved but thoughtful, someone who prefers observing the people around her rather than being in the spotlight. Fitting, then, that in “Sentimental Value” she plays the quiet, levelheaded sister serving as the mediator between impulsive Nora and egotistical Gustav. Lilleaas has become quite adept at doing a lot while seemingly doing very little.
“In acting school, some of the best characters I did were mute,” she notes. “They couldn’t express language, but they were very expressive. It was freeing to not have a voice. Agnes, she’s present a lot of the time but doesn’t necessarily have that many lines. To me, that’s freedom — the [dialogue] very often comes in the way of that.”
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in “Sentimental Value.”
(Kasper Tuxen)
Lilleaas hadn’t met Trier before her audition, but they instantly bonded over the challenges of raising young kids. And she sparked to the script’s examination of parents and children. Unlike restless Nora, Agnes is married with a son, able to view her deeply flawed dad from the vantage point of both a daughter and mother. Lilleaas shares her character’s sympathy for the inability of different generations to connect.
“A lot of parents and children’s relationships stop at a point,” she says. “It doesn’t evolve like a romantic relationship, [where] the mindset is to grow together. With families, it’s ‘You’re the child, I’m the parent.’ But you have to grow together and accept each other. And that’s difficult.”
Spend time with Lilleaas and you’ll notice she discusses acting in terms of human behavior rather than technique. In fact, she initially studied psychology. “I’ve always been interested in the [experience] of being alive,” she says. “Tremendous grief is very painful, but you can only experience that if you have great love. I’ve tried the more psychological approach of studying people, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Acting is the perfect medium for me to explore life.”
Other out-of-towners might be disappointed to arrive in sunny Southern California only to be greeted by storm clouds, but Lilleaas is sanguine about the situation. “I could have been at the beach, but it’s fine,” she says, amused, looking out the nearby windows. “I can go to the movies — it’s perfect movie weather.”
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. (Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
Her measured response to both her Hollywood ascension and a rainy forecast speak to her generally unfussed demeanor. During our conversation, Lilleaas’ candor and lack of vanity are striking. How often does a rising star talk about being happy when a filmmaker gives her fewer lines? Or fantasize about a life after acting?
“Some days I’ll be like, ‘I want to give it up. I want to have a small farm,’” she admits. “We lived on a farm and had horses and chickens when I grew up. I miss that. But at the same time, I need to be in an urban environment.”
She gives the matter more thought, sussing out her conflicted feelings. “Maybe as I grow older and have children, I feel this need to go back to something that’s familiar and safe,” she suggests. “I think that’s why I’m searching for small farms [online] — that’s, like, a dream thing. I need some dreams that they’re not reality — it’s a way to escape.”
Lilleaas may have decided against becoming a psychologist, but she’s always interrogating her motivations. This desire for a farm is her latest self-exploration, clarifying for her that she loves her profession but not the superficial trappings that accompany it.
“Ten years ago, this would maybe have been a dream, what’s happening now,” she says, gesturing at her swanky surroundings. “But you realize what you want to focus on and give value. I don’t necessarily want to give this that much value. I appreciate it and everything, but I don’t want to put my heart in it, because I know that it goes up and down and it’s not constant. I put my heart in this movie. Everything that comes after that? My heart can’t be in that.”
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