Apple's Stream Team: Zane Lowe, Bozoma Saint John, and Larry Jackson Are Taking Music to the Future

Brendan Klinkenberg
Updated
Apple's Stream Team: Zane Lowe, Bozoma Saint John, and Larry Jackson Are Taking Music to the Future

Fifteen years ago, Apple changed the music industry. Everyone remembers the launch of the iPod and the iTunes store and its earth-shattering wake: the MP3 revolution, thousands of songs in your pocket, the decimation of the music industry as we knew it. Now, with the rise of streaming, the industry is standing at the precipice of another sea change. Once again, Apple is telling the world that it’s going to transform how you listen to music.

Eighteen months after its debut, Apple Music is clearly more than just a streaming service. Any assumptions that Apple was taking on Spotify, Tidal, and their ilk, by simply making a splashy clone and putting it on every iPhone on Earth have been dispelled. Instead, Apple Music is trying to do, well, everything. Under the guidance of its head of content, Larry Jackson, 35, it’s signing the biggest names in music—including Drake, Frank Ocean, and Taylor Swift—to exclusive deals, and flying right in the face of the old-world labels to do so. Apple has established its own radio station, Beats 1, and poached Zane Lowe, 43, from BBC Radio 1 to serve as its leading personality. And it has Bozoma Saint John, 39, who ran music and entertainment marketing at Pepsi and reportedly brokered Beyoncé’s 2013 Super Bowl performance, to explain what Apple Music is for the masses who have never shelled out for a streaming subscription.

If Apple Music seems freewheeling, that’s because it is. It’s laying out a future for the music industry, but right now, the path ahead is murky. The company is seemingly figuring things out as it goes—a far cry, metaphorically speaking, from the perfectly designed rectangle of the iPod. Unlike Steve Jobs, Jackson, Lowe, and Saint John aren’t designers—they’re plucked directly from the entertainment industry. Fittingly, it’s a new kind of leadership for the next chapter of music history.

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