Apple launched its “24/7 curated Internet radio station” Beats 1 in parallel to its new music streaming service in June. Since then, it has attracted guest hosts such as Drake, Pharrell Williams, Dr Dre, St Vincent, Ezra Koenig and Josh Homme, among others.
Now Spotify has recruited the likes of Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, Mike Skinner’s club outfit Tonga, Jungle and grime MC Big Narstie to head its original radio programming under the ‘In Residence’ banner.
Unlike Beats 1, the shows will not be broadcast on a traditional time-based radio schedule but instead will be available on demand in a Spotify playlist format.
Listen to the first few ‘In Residence’ shows here.
Spotify was recently criticised by Joanna Newsom, who said she won’t be sharing her new album ‘Divers’ on the platform.
Comparing the service to rotten bananas, Newsom said: “I’ve walked out of grocery stores because I can tell that there’s a banana over-ripening that’s fallen under the produce bins. It’s been there for a few days – it’s brown and gives off this gas. I can smell it walking in the door.”
“Spotify is the banana of the music industry,” she continued. “It just gives off a fume. You can just smell that something’s wrong with it.”
“My problem with Spotify is that, obviously the music industry is changing, and I accept that. And the way in which we’ve monetized the creation and consumption of music in the past is also changing. And I accept that too. I don’t love it, but I accept it. But in a way, that phenomenon is sort of a large, zoomed-out way of looking at everything at once. There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of things that are shifting. It’s cultural. There’s not really a villain.”
