Apple is planning an eclectic bag of tricks for its Beats 1 radio station, and artist-curated shows are part of that. The first such program debuts tonight at 7 PM PT / 10 AM ET, and it’s St. Vincent’s Mixtape Delivery Service, in which St. Vincent solicits and listens to requests for specific mixtapes from fans and then creates them from her own section of tracks.
The idea behind the show is that people are looking for track selections for specific moods or situations. One example from Rolling Stone is an 11-year old girl who writes in requesting a list of songs for her own nightly private singing party. But how is there already content for this kind of show, since the Beats 1 station just launched today?
Here’s the answer: The official St. Vincent page made a request earlier this month for requests for curated playlists, which probably provided the basics from which follow-up requests and recorded versions destined for air were created.
The one-hour block of programming should give us some idea of what artist-led stations will be like, and in case it’s too late in your time zone when it first airs later tonight, the show will be repeated tomorrow during a reasonable hour for European listeners.