Earlier this year, Zane Lowe spoke with FADER about the origins of Beats 1 Radio. "The first question we asked ourselves was: what is our voice and how does it relate to the entire world? When you take away the idea of talking about the local news or the local weather or whatever at either end of a song, you get to focus on what I think doesn’t get a lot of attention in the wake of those things, which is music. So our thing at Beats 1 was, how do we make music the center of the conversation for people who are listening in?"
Back in August, the news broke that Beats 1 could be the first of several Apple Music stations—the company's original deal with record labels included licenses for up to six broadcasting platforms. Apple may be thinking about expanding its presence on the airwaves: According to MacRumors, the company recently submitted paperwork in the U.S. to trademark the terms "B2," "B3," "B4," "B5," "Beats 2," "Beats 3," "Beats 4," and "Beats 5." The logos for B2 through B5 apparently all mimic the Beats 1 logo.
Read Lowe's FADER interview.