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BBC Radio 1's Head of Music, George Ergatoudis, has blasted Apple, calling them 'a hige disruptive beast.'
As the BBC reports, Ergatoudis was speaking at the Worldwide Radio Summit in Los Angeles last week, alongside Ben Cooper who is the controller for BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra. They delivered a joint keynote on the future of radio. Argatoudis said that Apple would be a huge threat to radio stations all around the world and that they were 'sharks taking our audience away.'
He went on to claim that the technology juggernaut's 'piles of cash' and ambitious ideas could change radio forever. He stated his belief that Apple's new streaming service would be built upon a 'huge amount of learning from traditional radio.' Ben Cooper opened the keynote with the declaration 'Radio is Dead!!' before going on to explain how Radio 1 had lost a lot of it's young audience to YouTube, as well as how he felt smartphones should be utilised in the future of radio. 'The answer is to visualise a lot of our content' he stated.
Zane Lowe recently left Radio 1 to take a position at Apple to work on their new streaming service under Dr Dre and Trent Reznor. It was also announced this week that Apple had poached a number of talent from BBC Radio 1 with four more top producers expected to be joining the tech giant. One of these four is rumoured to be Lowe's former producer James Bursey.
Apple are expected to launch their new streaming service in the Summer to rival Spotify and Jay-Z's new Tidal system.
