8 ms·

Apple releases U2 album removal tool

146 points by schrofer 12y ago

fwr 12y ago
http://itunes.com/soi-remove http://itunes.com/soi-remove This is a direct link. It looks like a scam website, especially the form that pops up after you press "Remove Album". I would never trust that if I were a person literate enough to know where not to enter your passwords, but not enough to know about SSL certificates.
- hoopism 12y ago
  I'd venture to say nothing is "hastily" done at a company Apple's size but perhaps in this case it was... also seems to present consistently on multiple iProducts with no reactive crappola.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  Not sure if this was the case when you visited, but it redirects me to https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/offerOptOut https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/off...
- jtzhou 12y ago
  This is very unclear: "Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to redownload as a previous purchase. If you later decide you want the album, you will need to get it again." Huh, so if I remove it from my account, it will be no longer available for a "redownload" but then I can just "get it again"? Lots of vague sentences here.
baddox 12y ago
It was a bizarre choice to throw the album into everyone's library, rather than just feature it on the iTunes front page as a free download. They probably wanted people to discover the album faux-serendipitously, but I feel they showed a profound lack of understanding of (or disregard for) people's music listening habits and preferences.
- tpurves 12y ago
  This. The whole thing could have been handled so much better so easily.
- ivraatiems 12y ago
  You are certainly right, in my opinion, but I think that it's even more important to note how tone-deaf this move was in light of the recent iCloud leaks (I'd argue, in fact, that all of Apple's recent press conference was similarly confused). Nobody wants to think about the idea that Apple can do/see anything they want at any time to our music collections and phones. Even if that isn't strictly true, and even if they probably wouldn't, it's a perception that's being confirmed by recent events, and this stunt re-enforced it.
  - jedmeyers 12y ago
    Since when was it proven that the leaks were due to iCloud vulnerabilities? There were a lot of allegations, sure, but no hard evidence. If someone guesses your GMail password and leaks your mail - was it a GMail leak?
    - ivraatiems 12y ago
      It's not proven, but honestly, that doesn't matter. This is all about public perception. If it feels like Apple did something wrong, they might as well have, at least as far as their PR response ought to be concerned.
      - gress 12y ago
        Not only is it not proven, it is proven false. But, I totally agree that this U2 move was absurdly ill considered.
        ivraatiems 12y ago
        Apple of all companies supposedly knows the value of appearances (see, for example, their purchase of Beats). I think maybe this was a "too much Kool-aid" kind of moment, where they just forgot that not everyone sees their services like they do.
knd775 12y ago
I heard a lot of people complain that the album had been automatically added to their library. I'm glad that they made a simple way for people with limited knowledge to remove it. I still don't understand why the songs were automatically added and downloaded. Why were they not simply made available for free on iTunes?
- kayoone 12y ago
  I think it depends on your icloud settings. If you set music to automatically download when added to your library, the song would just pop up on your device.
  - Caballera5678 12y ago
    Correct. The album was simply added to everyone's iTune's Library, if on your iDevice under the iTunes & App store settings had 'Music' enabled for 'Automatic Downloads' then any new purchases (including free) would be automatically downloaded onto your device. If you don't have that setting enabled, the album wasn't downloaded.
- ssharp 12y ago
  If they were made free, they wouldn't be getting all the publicity. It seems like big artists are now using quirky ways and partnerships to release albums in order to drum up publicity and increase reach. Jay Z pre-released his last album with Samsung as an app. Beyonce released an album completely by surprise. Now U2 releases an album where iOS users just get it by default.
- ripter 12y ago
  It must be a setting, it didn't automatically download for me. It just added it to my 'paid' music section, but I still had to select download.
andrewtbham 12y ago
I wish they would let you delete other songs that you have bought.
- carlob 12y ago
  Honest question: is there any compelling reason to tie the account you buy songs from to your device? It seems to me that the way the manage your music for you is more of a nuisance than anything else. Maybe I should restate the question in more general sense. I keep my gmail logged out while I browse, I never connect my kindle to wifi, because I find all of these integration moves to be more of a nuisance than anything else. So in general hat's in it for me? what's good reason to sell all of my data to large_tech_company, as opposed to just some of it?
- jmreid 12y ago
  They do let you hide purchases so that they won't show up on in the music list on iOS and iTunes. They won't let you delete a purchase, which makes sense. It's confusing because they're using purchase history as a basis for your entire library, which might not sync up with your mindset for your music list. I've definitely hidden past purchases that I know I'll never need easy access to.
  - andrewtbham 12y ago
    Ok cool. so the feature does exist. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4919 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4919
- dharbin 12y ago
  I agree. I have to play whack-a-mole to keep songs out of my library that I'm no longer interested in.
- ctdonath 12y ago
  This. Content providers don't seem to understand the value of permanently discarding unwanted content. They don't grasp the scale of the typical user's music (or book, or game, or whatever) library, and the user's mental capacity for managing it. I've stopped using Starbucks' "pick of the week" precisely because I _don't_want_ most of what I download & hear from them; I've already some 500 albums that I bought & know, and don't need hundreds (or just dozens) more unwanted one-track "albums", or even full albums, cluttering up the list. I'd like to give a new album/band a chance with a free download, but not if I can't make 'em go away (be it at all, or with convoluted effort) as most I don't care to keep. Worse, AFAIK Apple still hasn't restored/fixed the swipe-and-tap-to-delete option for music put on a device via iTunes Match. Allowing the notion of having a vast permanent collection of all my purchased audio content in the cloud (whether I wish to keep that content or not), there's no sane way to remove downloaded material from individual devices. I've several large fragments of audiobooks taking up gigabytes on my phone which I desperately want to delete, but the only way seems to wipe ALL "music" and re-download what I want (and with some pretty scary-worded warnings in the process). Yes, content providers, there's some content I've "purchased" but no longer want. Please give me a way to remove it from my life, permanently.
allegory 12y ago
Thank goodness for this although it should be entirely unnecessary. Both my kids turned up yesterday and asked me why the hell I put U2 on their iPads.
- wahsd 12y ago
  I'm sorry, but this sounds like you have little shits for kids. Boo hoo they got a full, free record by a world famous band on their pocket computer that they probably pay nothing for. I can only imagine snotty, spoiled little brats snorting and scoffing about how you put U2 on their devices.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    If I were under 20, I'd be very upset at being caught listening to the elevator music that U2 churns out these days. I'd have to explain to my friends what it was doing on my iPhone. Being under 50, I'd only be mildly upset. Either way it's totally inappropriate for Apple to push unwanted content at their users.
idlewords 12y ago
This was an interesting marketing failure. Looking at the Twitter feed for 'u2 iphone', it was clear that a lot of people took umbrage at what they thought was an invasion of their music library, or thought they had been hacked, or otherwise felt it was a mistake. Then the word spread that the album had been given away for free. But U2 and Apple had gone to great pains to explain that Apple "bought" the album for its users as a gift. I feel sorry for the support people who had to field calls about this stuff this week. What a half-baked marketing stunt.
- hoopism 12y ago
  Don't discount this as a way of getting non-apple fanboys talking about apple. Hell, I didn't even know U2 was alive... now I am talking about them. I am sure it wasn't the intended purpose... but there's a lot of pub on this... and it certainly doesn't seem to be affecting sales.
  - idlewords 12y ago
    I think nothing short of a meteor impact could affect sales. But Apple seems to be taking some risks here with its image. It's real easy to seem uncool if you're bungling a marketing campaign and imposing a dad album on everyone, in a way they find intrusive. And it's a bad idea to seem uncool right before you launch a very expensive line of fashion accessories. All it took was one photo of showering Scoble to forever make Google glasses radioactive.
- phillmv 12y ago
  It makes me wonder about the mindset of the people setting these kinds of policies. It's easy in hindsight to cast aspersions, but to me it seemed prima facie an 'invasion' of a private space. Like, Apple decided that owning a U2 album was now mandatory. I'm reminded of that Page quote last year where he dismissed any Google Glass privacy concerns. I don't have a good articulation for this yet, but it seems an awful lot of people are blind to the alienation these systems are capable of causing.
- valgaze 12y ago
  Sounds like a pretty good deal for Interscope: "At one point Thursday afternoon, 26 U2 titles charted simultaneously on iTunes top 200 albums rankings, Apple and Interscope Records representatives confirmed to Mashable on Friday. Meanwhile, U218 Singles landed in the top 10 in 46 countries." http://mashable.com/2014/09/12/u2-album-itunes-chart-apple-release/ http://mashable.com/2014/09/12/u2-album-itunes-chart-apple-r...
chollida1 12y ago
I'm guessing that this decision had a lot to do with U2 looking at their legacy. With this push release, they can claim their album is on the most devices ever, most listened to album ever, etc, while still collecting a large pay check from Apple at the same time. If apple wrote the contract in such a way that each download is considered a sale, then U2 suddenly has the most successful album of all time in terms of "sales". I don't think there is anything wrong with this if its the case, but with their history of success and age, its understandable if they start looking at their career in terms of how they rank against bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. To clarify for some people, this in now way is to "blame" U2 for this. I'm just trying to see this from the U2 perspective.
- billiam 12y ago
  Following your logic, I want to congratulate Microsoft for the mandatory Windows XP Service Pack 2--the most popular software download ever!
  - mjn 12y ago
    There's actually a lot of debate about that in games: best-selling games tend to be often at least in part boosted by bundling with consoles. For example, the two best-selling games of all time by some counts are Tetris and Wii Sports, but somewhere around 25% of Tetris's sales came from being bundled with the Gameboy, and >95% of Wii Sports sales were from bundling. (You can see some of that debate in the endless archives of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game...). Just discounting bundled sales doesn't seem quite right either, though. If you're measuring a game's ability to independently market itself, maybe, but if you're using it as a proxy for game popularity, # of players, cultural reach, etc., then bundled games like Super Mario Bros genuinely have a ton of players and historical importance.
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  Blaming U2, or shifting a sizable chunk of the blame to U2, seems like Apple apologist talk. It just doesn't sound like Bono and The Edge (does he capitalize the "The"?) to sit around and discuss the nuance of forced installs vs a free download. I doubt they would be so insecure in their place in pop history to "force" one group of specific technology users to download their album. My personal theory is that Tim Cook wanted to have something that was "his" in keeping the iPhone as part of the cultural zeitgeist and not just another really good smart phone. Steve had his pursuit of the Beatles , Tim has his "gift" of U2.
tuxidomasx 12y ago
Don't they have to download it to everybody's library for U2 to get the credit for a digital download/purchase? This looks similar to the way Jay-Z sold a million+ of Magna Carta Holy Grail a year ago. Get a deal with a smart phone company to bundle their album with new units. Then show the RIAA the digital download stats, and bam! Platinum status. I guess in this case the album is pushed to existing devices, but as long as somebody pays for the sale (even if its 'pre-bought' by a company or through a deal) it still counts. Seems like the new way to fudge numbers.
- tehwebguy 12y ago
  Nielsen's SoundScan rules prohibit reporting any album purchases that weren't made for 50% or more of retail value. That said, they broke the rules for the Lady Gaga album that Amazon sold at a massive discount while making public statements that they weren't breaking their own rules. Not sure if Jay-Z's sales were counted as well but I would definitely consider it Platinum* with an asterisk.
gnarbarian 12y ago
I have this exact same problem on google music. They give you tons of free pop stuff and I HATE almost all of it. There's no way that I have discovered to remove it from your library either (at least from the phone's interface). This prevents me from shuffling all the songs in my library because 90% of them are shit pop songs I don't like. Edit: It appears you can remove songs one at a time. But you cannot remove entire albums Google has added to your library. see: http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN It appears you CAN do this from the website.
- dag11 12y ago
  I have Google Music All Access and I've never experienced Google plopping songs/albums in my library that I didn't explicitly request. How is this happening to you?
  - wldcordeiro 12y ago
    Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Only thing it does is suggest albums based on my listening habits or if it's new releases by artists in my library.
  - gnarbarian 12y ago
    I am also a subscriber. It's just always been there in my library. tons of crap from kanye, john mayer, xzibit etc.. I think I've finally got most of it cleared out. It's taken me two hours to delete everything they added via the web interface.
    - dag11 12y ago
      Wow, that's really weird to hear. Google's never done that to me.
    - tschuy 12y ago
      Have you perhaps logged in with a Nexus device? I know that my Nexus 7 (2012) came with quite a bit of free media to promote the recent redo of Google Music, Google Play TV/Movies, etc.
general_failure 12y ago
This is very unwarranted of Apple to push content without user permission. Just because it's free doesn't mean I want it. There's a reason many parties have a "no gift" policy. People don't want stuff just because it's free.
Kronopath 12y ago
After seeing this article, I looked into my music library in my iPhone, and sure enough, there it was. What a jarring experience. Especially since I've been wanting to clean up my music library for a while now, to get rid of old songs that I don't listen to. I don't appreciate Apple thwarting my efforts there.
- emehrkay 12y ago
  Its strange because it is there, but it didn't actually download. You can stream the songs and you can download them. Maybe they should have pushed a notification from the music app saying "Free music if you want it"
  - r00fus 12y ago
    It's the same experience as if you'd purchased the music on one device and viewing your purchases on another. - it's also the same experience if you use iTunes Match on several devices - I use the streaming method a lot for those 16GB devices where I don't want all my space used up by my music collection on iTunes Match.
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laurencerowe 12y ago
But what if I have other U2 albums in need of removal?
- Argorak 12y ago
  Well, in that case, you probably bought this onto yourself.
alsetmusic 12y ago
I've been (politely, but firmly) going back and forth with iTunes support on this and had already written a draft to Tim Cook that I planned to send today. This is welcome news. On a side note, how likely is it that we'll ever hear a correction from U2's record label as to the success of the launch? Spoiler: no chance. Edit: > Bono added that Apple had "paid" for the giveaway… I was too quick to post without reading.
serve_yay 12y ago
This was such a dumb idea. Just make the thing free, and if people want it they'll get it. Bad time to be doing anything that could be construed as "creepy", when you're getting into the payments business. Dumb.
- vidoc 12y ago
  If they had done that, they could have exposed U2 to very bad PR: for example if the number of actual downloads was ridiculously low :P
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    Indeed, so they took the PR hit themselves. How umm... noble.
Luc 12y ago
I wonder if there is a long-term strategy behind it, and this is a first step towards getting consumers to accept content being pushed onto their devices. Ads, basically. By giving away a new album, they get consumers to think of pushed content as something good, as free stuff. Perhaps next time it will be only half of the album. Or the tracks will only play 5 times before they're removed again.
fakeasaur 12y ago
Apple should have realized how personal music choices are for a lot of people. Shockingly aggressive move on their part. On the upside I got another episode of 'U Talkin' U2 to Me?'
- collyw 12y ago
  Exactly, their whole product range is prefixed with an 'i' as in me - my personal stuff.
misuba 12y ago
Where was this tool in 1996 when we really needed it?
mitchty 12y ago
I'm guessing that whomever is responsible for this idea at Apple will no longer have the ability to do this again. I honestly thought to myself, did I drunkenly buy a U2 album? How much did I drink. Just wish I could do the same thing to remove certain free songs out of my account for good.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
So, no apology?
Scuds 12y ago
I don't think there would be a similar reaction if a free game turned up in our respective Steam libraries, ready for downloading.
- collyw 12y ago
  Ok, I don't use either Steam or iTunes, but from what I gather it wasn't "ready for downloading" (implying the user has some choice in the matter) but was pushed onto the device without their knowledge.
  - ryukafalz 12y ago
    Not an Apple user, but from my understanding, it was placed in your media library, where you could then stream it. Actually downloading it to the device required extra steps.
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ThePhysicist 12y ago
Well, I guess you can really say that the album went "viral".
Osmium 12y ago
I find it fascinating how polarised a lot of the comments are. It's either: * People will complain about anything. Why be so ungrateful? You don't like it; fine, don't listen. * How did Apple ever think they could get away with this? It's invading my personal music library. Fundamentally, it seems that people have very different mental models of what a 'cloud' computing service is. For some people, it's still 'their' music/library, and so this is an invasion. Maybe that's how it should be in an ideal world, but it's not how it currently is. Hopefully, for these people, they'll come away with a better understanding of some of the tradeoffs we make when we decide to use cloud services, even if we don't realise it at the time. This is probably all made worse because iTunes started as a non-cloud service, but is now some weird hybrid, which is probably why there are such differing attitudes towards it. I think we can all agree this was a marketing fubar though. A download link would've been much better, and hopefully Apple will realise just how confusing their current set-up is, with even some people who wanted the album not being able to figure out how to get it...
LeicaLatte 12y ago
I like free music. So it's hard for me to understand the fuss. Its still weird to see Apple not tuning out the bad press anymore. They listen to criticisms way more than ever.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Most people will enjoy a free cup of coffee, but if you pour it into their lap with no warning, they might get a little upset.
stox 12y ago
I'll just leave this here: http://youtu.be/fGOrm9rzm7A http://youtu.be/fGOrm9rzm7A
k-mcgrady 12y ago
I surprised how much this pissed people off. It wasn't downloaded to your device unless you had turned automatic downloads on - it was just added to your iCloud. So free music not taking up any of your space. And if you did turn on auto-download just fucking delete it. Swipe left: delete. It's not difficult.
- icebraining 12y ago
  It's not about the difficulty, it's about the invasion of what is considered personal space. Even if people realize that your iCloud is on Apple's machines, they expect to be managed and viewed by them alone. To the pissed off, this was like your landlord entering your home while you were away and leaving a CD as a gift. And your landlord is a multinational company, not exactly an intimate friend.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    IMO it was more like your landlord popping a free CD in your mailbox. A minor inconvenience if you don't like the CD but nothing more.
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146 points by schrofer 12y ago

fwr 12y ago

http://itunes.com/soi-remove http://itunes.com/soi-remove This is a direct link. It looks like a scam website, especially the form that pops up after you press "Remove Album". I would never trust that if I were a person literate enough to know where not to enter your passwords, but not enough to know about SSL certificates.

hoopism 12y ago
I'd venture to say nothing is "hastily" done at a company Apple's size but perhaps in this case it was... also seems to present consistently on multiple iProducts with no reactive crappola.
thefreeman 12y ago
Not sure if this was the case when you visited, but it redirects me to https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/offerOptOut https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/off...
jtzhou 12y ago
This is very unclear: "Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to redownload as a previous purchase. If you later decide you want the album, you will need to get it again." Huh, so if I remove it from my account, it will be no longer available for a "redownload" but then I can just "get it again"? Lots of vague sentences here.

baddox 12y ago

It was a bizarre choice to throw the album into everyone's library, rather than just feature it on the iTunes front page as a free download. They probably wanted people to discover the album faux-serendipitously, but I feel they showed a profound lack of understanding of (or disregard for) people's music listening habits and preferences.

tpurves 12y ago
This. The whole thing could have been handled so much better so easily.
ivraatiems 12y ago
You are certainly right, in my opinion, but I think that it's even more important to note how tone-deaf this move was in light of the recent iCloud leaks (I'd argue, in fact, that all of Apple's recent press conference was similarly confused). Nobody wants to think about the idea that Apple can do/see anything they want at any time to our music collections and phones. Even if that isn't strictly true, and even if they probably wouldn't, it's a perception that's being confirmed by recent events, and this stunt re-enforced it.
- jedmeyers 12y ago
  Since when was it proven that the leaks were due to iCloud vulnerabilities? There were a lot of allegations, sure, but no hard evidence. If someone guesses your GMail password and leaks your mail - was it a GMail leak?
  - ivraatiems 12y ago
    It's not proven, but honestly, that doesn't matter. This is all about public perception. If it feels like Apple did something wrong, they might as well have, at least as far as their PR response ought to be concerned.
    - gress 12y ago
      Not only is it not proven, it is proven false. But, I totally agree that this U2 move was absurdly ill considered.
      - ivraatiems 12y ago
        Apple of all companies supposedly knows the value of appearances (see, for example, their purchase of Beats). I think maybe this was a "too much Kool-aid" kind of moment, where they just forgot that not everyone sees their services like they do.

knd775 12y ago

I heard a lot of people complain that the album had been automatically added to their library. I'm glad that they made a simple way for people with limited knowledge to remove it. I still don't understand why the songs were automatically added and downloaded. Why were they not simply made available for free on iTunes?

kayoone 12y ago
I think it depends on your icloud settings. If you set music to automatically download when added to your library, the song would just pop up on your device.
- Caballera5678 12y ago
  Correct. The album was simply added to everyone's iTune's Library, if on your iDevice under the iTunes & App store settings had 'Music' enabled for 'Automatic Downloads' then any new purchases (including free) would be automatically downloaded onto your device. If you don't have that setting enabled, the album wasn't downloaded.
ssharp 12y ago
If they were made free, they wouldn't be getting all the publicity. It seems like big artists are now using quirky ways and partnerships to release albums in order to drum up publicity and increase reach. Jay Z pre-released his last album with Samsung as an app. Beyonce released an album completely by surprise. Now U2 releases an album where iOS users just get it by default.
ripter 12y ago
It must be a setting, it didn't automatically download for me. It just added it to my 'paid' music section, but I still had to select download.

andrewtbham 12y ago

I wish they would let you delete other songs that you have bought.

carlob 12y ago
Honest question: is there any compelling reason to tie the account you buy songs from to your device? It seems to me that the way the manage your music for you is more of a nuisance than anything else. Maybe I should restate the question in more general sense. I keep my gmail logged out while I browse, I never connect my kindle to wifi, because I find all of these integration moves to be more of a nuisance than anything else. So in general hat's in it for me? what's good reason to sell all of my data to large_tech_company, as opposed to just some of it?
jmreid 12y ago
They do let you hide purchases so that they won't show up on in the music list on iOS and iTunes. They won't let you delete a purchase, which makes sense. It's confusing because they're using purchase history as a basis for your entire library, which might not sync up with your mindset for your music list. I've definitely hidden past purchases that I know I'll never need easy access to.
- andrewtbham 12y ago
  Ok cool. so the feature does exist. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4919 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4919
dharbin 12y ago
I agree. I have to play whack-a-mole to keep songs out of my library that I'm no longer interested in.
ctdonath 12y ago
This. Content providers don't seem to understand the value of permanently discarding unwanted content. They don't grasp the scale of the typical user's music (or book, or game, or whatever) library, and the user's mental capacity for managing it. I've stopped using Starbucks' "pick of the week" precisely because I _don't_want_ most of what I download & hear from them; I've already some 500 albums that I bought & know, and don't need hundreds (or just dozens) more unwanted one-track "albums", or even full albums, cluttering up the list. I'd like to give a new album/band a chance with a free download, but not if I can't make 'em go away (be it at all, or with convoluted effort) as most I don't care to keep. Worse, AFAIK Apple still hasn't restored/fixed the swipe-and-tap-to-delete option for music put on a device via iTunes Match. Allowing the notion of having a vast permanent collection of all my purchased audio content in the cloud (whether I wish to keep that content or not), there's no sane way to remove downloaded material from individual devices. I've several large fragments of audiobooks taking up gigabytes on my phone which I desperately want to delete, but the only way seems to wipe ALL "music" and re-download what I want (and with some pretty scary-worded warnings in the process). Yes, content providers, there's some content I've "purchased" but no longer want. Please give me a way to remove it from my life, permanently.

allegory 12y ago

Thank goodness for this although it should be entirely unnecessary. Both my kids turned up yesterday and asked me why the hell I put U2 on their iPads.

wahsd 12y ago
I'm sorry, but this sounds like you have little shits for kids. Boo hoo they got a full, free record by a world famous band on their pocket computer that they probably pay nothing for. I can only imagine snotty, spoiled little brats snorting and scoffing about how you put U2 on their devices.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  If I were under 20, I'd be very upset at being caught listening to the elevator music that U2 churns out these days. I'd have to explain to my friends what it was doing on my iPhone. Being under 50, I'd only be mildly upset. Either way it's totally inappropriate for Apple to push unwanted content at their users.

idlewords 12y ago

This was an interesting marketing failure. Looking at the Twitter feed for 'u2 iphone', it was clear that a lot of people took umbrage at what they thought was an invasion of their music library, or thought they had been hacked, or otherwise felt it was a mistake. Then the word spread that the album had been given away for free. But U2 and Apple had gone to great pains to explain that Apple "bought" the album for its users as a gift. I feel sorry for the support people who had to field calls about this stuff this week. What a half-baked marketing stunt.

hoopism 12y ago
Don't discount this as a way of getting non-apple fanboys talking about apple. Hell, I didn't even know U2 was alive... now I am talking about them. I am sure it wasn't the intended purpose... but there's a lot of pub on this... and it certainly doesn't seem to be affecting sales.
- idlewords 12y ago
  I think nothing short of a meteor impact could affect sales. But Apple seems to be taking some risks here with its image. It's real easy to seem uncool if you're bungling a marketing campaign and imposing a dad album on everyone, in a way they find intrusive. And it's a bad idea to seem uncool right before you launch a very expensive line of fashion accessories. All it took was one photo of showering Scoble to forever make Google glasses radioactive.
phillmv 12y ago
It makes me wonder about the mindset of the people setting these kinds of policies. It's easy in hindsight to cast aspersions, but to me it seemed prima facie an 'invasion' of a private space. Like, Apple decided that owning a U2 album was now mandatory. I'm reminded of that Page quote last year where he dismissed any Google Glass privacy concerns. I don't have a good articulation for this yet, but it seems an awful lot of people are blind to the alienation these systems are capable of causing.
valgaze 12y ago
Sounds like a pretty good deal for Interscope: "At one point Thursday afternoon, 26 U2 titles charted simultaneously on iTunes top 200 albums rankings, Apple and Interscope Records representatives confirmed to Mashable on Friday. Meanwhile, U218 Singles landed in the top 10 in 46 countries." http://mashable.com/2014/09/12/u2-album-itunes-chart-apple-release/ http://mashable.com/2014/09/12/u2-album-itunes-chart-apple-r...

chollida1 12y ago

I'm guessing that this decision had a lot to do with U2 looking at their legacy. With this push release, they can claim their album is on the most devices ever, most listened to album ever, etc, while still collecting a large pay check from Apple at the same time. If apple wrote the contract in such a way that each download is considered a sale, then U2 suddenly has the most successful album of all time in terms of "sales". I don't think there is anything wrong with this if its the case, but with their history of success and age, its understandable if they start looking at their career in terms of how they rank against bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. To clarify for some people, this in now way is to "blame" U2 for this. I'm just trying to see this from the U2 perspective.

billiam 12y ago
Following your logic, I want to congratulate Microsoft for the mandatory Windows XP Service Pack 2--the most popular software download ever!
- mjn 12y ago
  There's actually a lot of debate about that in games: best-selling games tend to be often at least in part boosted by bundling with consoles. For example, the two best-selling games of all time by some counts are Tetris and Wii Sports, but somewhere around 25% of Tetris's sales came from being bundled with the Gameboy, and >95% of Wii Sports sales were from bundling. (You can see some of that debate in the endless archives of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game...). Just discounting bundled sales doesn't seem quite right either, though. If you're measuring a game's ability to independently market itself, maybe, but if you're using it as a proxy for game popularity, # of players, cultural reach, etc., then bundled games like Super Mario Bros genuinely have a ton of players and historical importance.
jbigelow76 12y ago
Blaming U2, or shifting a sizable chunk of the blame to U2, seems like Apple apologist talk. It just doesn't sound like Bono and The Edge (does he capitalize the "The"?) to sit around and discuss the nuance of forced installs vs a free download. I doubt they would be so insecure in their place in pop history to "force" one group of specific technology users to download their album. My personal theory is that Tim Cook wanted to have something that was "his" in keeping the iPhone as part of the cultural zeitgeist and not just another really good smart phone. Steve had his pursuit of the Beatles , Tim has his "gift" of U2.

tuxidomasx 12y ago

Don't they have to download it to everybody's library for U2 to get the credit for a digital download/purchase? This looks similar to the way Jay-Z sold a million+ of Magna Carta Holy Grail a year ago. Get a deal with a smart phone company to bundle their album with new units. Then show the RIAA the digital download stats, and bam! Platinum status. I guess in this case the album is pushed to existing devices, but as long as somebody pays for the sale (even if its 'pre-bought' by a company or through a deal) it still counts. Seems like the new way to fudge numbers.

tehwebguy 12y ago
Nielsen's SoundScan rules prohibit reporting any album purchases that weren't made for 50% or more of retail value. That said, they broke the rules for the Lady Gaga album that Amazon sold at a massive discount while making public statements that they weren't breaking their own rules. Not sure if Jay-Z's sales were counted as well but I would definitely consider it Platinum* with an asterisk.

gnarbarian 12y ago

I have this exact same problem on google music. They give you tons of free pop stuff and I HATE almost all of it. There's no way that I have discovered to remove it from your library either (at least from the phone's interface). This prevents me from shuffling all the songs in my library because 90% of them are shit pop songs I don't like. Edit: It appears you can remove songs one at a time. But you cannot remove entire albums Google has added to your library. see: http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN It appears you CAN do this from the website.

dag11 12y ago
I have Google Music All Access and I've never experienced Google plopping songs/albums in my library that I didn't explicitly request. How is this happening to you?
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Only thing it does is suggest albums based on my listening habits or if it's new releases by artists in my library.
- gnarbarian 12y ago
  I am also a subscriber. It's just always been there in my library. tons of crap from kanye, john mayer, xzibit etc.. I think I've finally got most of it cleared out. It's taken me two hours to delete everything they added via the web interface.
  - dag11 12y ago
    Wow, that's really weird to hear. Google's never done that to me.
  - tschuy 12y ago
    Have you perhaps logged in with a Nexus device? I know that my Nexus 7 (2012) came with quite a bit of free media to promote the recent redo of Google Music, Google Play TV/Movies, etc.

general_failure 12y ago

This is very unwarranted of Apple to push content without user permission. Just because it's free doesn't mean I want it. There's a reason many parties have a "no gift" policy. People don't want stuff just because it's free.

Kronopath 12y ago

After seeing this article, I looked into my music library in my iPhone, and sure enough, there it was. What a jarring experience. Especially since I've been wanting to clean up my music library for a while now, to get rid of old songs that I don't listen to. I don't appreciate Apple thwarting my efforts there.

emehrkay 12y ago
Its strange because it is there, but it didn't actually download. You can stream the songs and you can download them. Maybe they should have pushed a notification from the music app saying "Free music if you want it"
- r00fus 12y ago
  It's the same experience as if you'd purchased the music on one device and viewing your purchases on another. - it's also the same experience if you use iTunes Match on several devices - I use the streaming method a lot for those 16GB devices where I don't want all my space used up by my music collection on iTunes Match.

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laurencerowe 12y ago

But what if I have other U2 albums in need of removal?

Argorak 12y ago
Well, in that case, you probably bought this onto yourself.

alsetmusic 12y ago

I've been (politely, but firmly) going back and forth with iTunes support on this and had already written a draft to Tim Cook that I planned to send today. This is welcome news. On a side note, how likely is it that we'll ever hear a correction from U2's record label as to the success of the launch? Spoiler: no chance. Edit: > Bono added that Apple had "paid" for the giveaway… I was too quick to post without reading.

serve_yay 12y ago

This was such a dumb idea. Just make the thing free, and if people want it they'll get it. Bad time to be doing anything that could be construed as "creepy", when you're getting into the payments business. Dumb.

vidoc 12y ago
If they had done that, they could have exposed U2 to very bad PR: for example if the number of actual downloads was ridiculously low :P
- serve_yay 12y ago
  Indeed, so they took the PR hit themselves. How umm... noble.

Luc 12y ago

I wonder if there is a long-term strategy behind it, and this is a first step towards getting consumers to accept content being pushed onto their devices. Ads, basically. By giving away a new album, they get consumers to think of pushed content as something good, as free stuff. Perhaps next time it will be only half of the album. Or the tracks will only play 5 times before they're removed again.

fakeasaur 12y ago

Apple should have realized how personal music choices are for a lot of people. Shockingly aggressive move on their part. On the upside I got another episode of 'U Talkin' U2 to Me?'

collyw 12y ago
Exactly, their whole product range is prefixed with an 'i' as in me - my personal stuff.

misuba 12y ago

Where was this tool in 1996 when we really needed it?

mitchty 12y ago

I'm guessing that whomever is responsible for this idea at Apple will no longer have the ability to do this again. I honestly thought to myself, did I drunkenly buy a U2 album? How much did I drink. Just wish I could do the same thing to remove certain free songs out of my account for good.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

So, no apology?

Scuds 12y ago

I don't think there would be a similar reaction if a free game turned up in our respective Steam libraries, ready for downloading.

collyw 12y ago
Ok, I don't use either Steam or iTunes, but from what I gather it wasn't "ready for downloading" (implying the user has some choice in the matter) but was pushed onto the device without their knowledge.
- ryukafalz 12y ago
  Not an Apple user, but from my understanding, it was placed in your media library, where you could then stream it. Actually downloading it to the device required extra steps.

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ThePhysicist 12y ago

Well, I guess you can really say that the album went "viral".

Osmium 12y ago

I find it fascinating how polarised a lot of the comments are. It's either: * People will complain about anything. Why be so ungrateful? You don't like it; fine, don't listen. * How did Apple ever think they could get away with this? It's invading my personal music library. Fundamentally, it seems that people have very different mental models of what a 'cloud' computing service is. For some people, it's still 'their' music/library, and so this is an invasion. Maybe that's how it should be in an ideal world, but it's not how it currently is. Hopefully, for these people, they'll come away with a better understanding of some of the tradeoffs we make when we decide to use cloud services, even if we don't realise it at the time. This is probably all made worse because iTunes started as a non-cloud service, but is now some weird hybrid, which is probably why there are such differing attitudes towards it. I think we can all agree this was a marketing fubar though. A download link would've been much better, and hopefully Apple will realise just how confusing their current set-up is, with even some people who wanted the album not being able to figure out how to get it...

LeicaLatte 12y ago

I like free music. So it's hard for me to understand the fuss. Its still weird to see Apple not tuning out the bad press anymore. They listen to criticisms way more than ever.

freehunter 12y ago
Most people will enjoy a free cup of coffee, but if you pour it into their lap with no warning, they might get a little upset.

stox 12y ago

I'll just leave this here: http://youtu.be/fGOrm9rzm7A http://youtu.be/fGOrm9rzm7A

k-mcgrady 12y ago

I surprised how much this pissed people off. It wasn't downloaded to your device unless you had turned automatic downloads on - it was just added to your iCloud. So free music not taking up any of your space. And if you did turn on auto-download just fucking delete it. Swipe left: delete. It's not difficult.

icebraining 12y ago
It's not about the difficulty, it's about the invasion of what is considered personal space. Even if people realize that your iCloud is on Apple's machines, they expect to be managed and viewed by them alone. To the pissed off, this was like your landlord entering your home while you were away and leaving a CD as a gift. And your landlord is a multinational company, not exactly an intimate friend.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  IMO it was more like your landlord popping a free CD in your mailbox. A minor inconvenience if you don't like the CD but nothing more.

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