SOLARSYSTYM: Lorde launches a station on Sonos Radio

Lorde has launched a new radio station, taking fans on an audio journey through her life and career up until this point. The new show shares moments from her teenage years, starting points in music, inspirational songs, stories and more.

The radio show is available for free now and includes artists such as J Dilla, Cocteau Twins, and Radiohead. “It’s a crazy collection,” the New Zealander said in a statement.

“SOLARSYSTYM is like stepping into my brain, giving listeners a front-row seat to the songs that have meant a ton to me and my life,” she added.

“Everything from the tunes my parents pulled from their super sick CD tower to the songs I ripped off YouTube as a pimply teen to the records I include in full because they were that shapeshifting for me as a thinker and feeler.”

Lorde grew up in Auckland and became internationally known in 2013 when her debut studio album Pure Heroine became a hit – the single Royals went to number one in multiple countries.

So far, there are 60,000 radio stations on the Sonos Radio platform and it has a history of working with some of the world’s biggest artists: Its Radio Hour station has included sessions with FKA Twigs, Erykah Badu and Brian Eno, and Thom Yorke has his own artist station called In The Absence Thereof... .

Lorde embarked on her 11-month Solar Power world tour in April, and will play four sold-out London gigs in June - three at the Roundhouse, and one at Alexandra Palace. She’ll also be at Glastonbury in the summer.

The launch of SOLARSYSTYM is part of a wider pattern of musicians finding novel ways to share their music and inspiration. In February, Kanye West released his album Donda 2 exclusively on his Stem Player – a music playing device that allows tracks to be broken down into stems (individual layers of sounds that make up a track). Despite the Stem Players costing $200 each, West said that he raked in $2.2m on the first day of sales.

Taylor Swift has been re-recording her albums as a means of reclaiming ownership over her albums after they were sold to media proprietor Scooter Braun in 2019 and Dua Lipa launched online hub Service95 in February, bringing together the singer’s “a considered curation of lists, recommendations, stories, information, thoughts, perspectives, and conversations”.