The first six episodes of Beats 1 host Zane Lowe’s interview podcast are live, with artists including Lady Gaga, Hayley Williams, Justin Bieber, Kanye West and Selena Gomez.

The podcast features Zane Lowe interviewing top artists usually ahead of their album releases. There is currently no set scheduled, but Apple have already released six episodes ready to listen to today:

The podcast is available via Apple Podcasts and the open podcast standard RSS.

Apple began experimenting with podcasting during the 2019 Grammy Awards. They are said to be working on a new podcast to promote content on Apple TV+ soon. This new series potentially marks Apple jumping into original podcasts in a big way.

Support for RSS feed is interesting, as it shows unlike Spotify, they aren’t currently locking down content to their own platform.

Exclusives are quickly becoming more and more frequent, with the likes of Joe Rogan recently signing an exclusive deal with Spotify for The Joe Rogan Experience for reportedly around $100 million. Spotify are said to have spent around $500 million acquiring exclusive content for its podcast platform last year.

Apple News+ recently started offering audio stories to recap the day’s top stories. This also shows Apple’s interest in targeting the ever growing podcasting demographic.