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Beats 1 radio flakes during exclusive MTV VMA nominees announcement

Beats 1 radio flakes during exclusive MTV VMA nominees announcement

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MTV's annual Video Music Awards was supposed to announce its nominees exclusively on Apple Music's Beats 1 radio today. Unfortunately, there seems to be some major technical issues — which is to say, Beats 1 radio is down for a number of listeners, according to Billboard and several others, for both desktop and mobile. As of this writing, US-based members of The Verge are still unable to listen (although our Canadian friends seem to be hearing Jamie xx just fine).

This isn't the first major / inopportune downtime for the streaming radio station. Beats 1 went down for about 30 minutes during its first 24 hours on the air (just after Jaden Smith requested Buffy the Vampire Slayers' theme song — can't blame Nerf Herder for this one).

Dammit, @Beats1, you're supposed to tell us!

We've reached out to Apple for more information. The full list of VMA nominations can be found at MTV — that's nine for Taylor Swift, five for Beyoncé, and four for Kendrick Lamar (or 13 nominations if you count Swift and Flying Lotus collaborations).