LOS ANGELES — “Check-check. One two-two-two-two-two. Hello hello hello.”

Zane Lowe, Britain’s most influential radio D.J., stood in a rented studio in Hollywood one recent morning, cursing about the hiss in his headphones.

“One two, one two, one two,” he barked into the mic. “I can’t even hear myself.”

For the last 12 years, Mr. Lowe has been a top tastemaker on the BBC’s Radio 1 by championing brand-new music, landing interviews with stars like Kanye West and running his show with a frenetic production style inspired by hip-hop itself. Now he is preparing for a much broader role as the guiding voice of Beats 1, a free Internet radio station from Apple that on Tuesday will begin broadcasting to smartphones and laptops around the world — an experiment, of sorts, to reinvent live radio.

The new gig also puts Mr. Lowe, 41, in the middle of the music industry’s latest battleground: streaming. Beats 1 is part of a revamped music strategy for Apple, which revolutionized the music world with iTunes and the iPod but lately has sat on the sidelines as upstarts like Spotify, Pandora and SoundCloud lure listeners by making it easy to play songs online.