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What does this decision, vetted by dozens of executives I imagine and definitely by Cook himself say about our Cloud-ified technological lives? Its just crazy

What does this decision, vetted by dozens of executives I imagine and definitely by Cook himself say about our Cloud-ified technological lives? Its just crazy to me that they can just throw music into your collection without even asking for permission. There's something really arrogant about Apple right now. I'm not sure what other word could possibly describe this. What boggles my mind even more is that U2, for all its popularity, is a poorly aging nostalgia act. Heck, I'm an old Gen-X'er and I barely remember their heyday with the Joshua Tree. Tweens and Millenials probably only see them as a band their parents listened to. There's really something off-putting about this. If it was Kanye or something, I could see the appeal, as he's popular now and has a wide-range of fans, but U2? We've long outgrown stale classic rockers and music popularity is very much not this monolithic structure anymore. If anyone should know this, you'd think the guys who run iTunes would.

joezydeco 12y ago
My gut feeling is that Cook & Company wanted to be able to pull a Jobs-like move upon announcement "The album is completely free to everyone and IN YOUR IPOD RIGHT NOW" ...especially since everything else announced was a wait (for the phone) or WAY away (like the watch).
baddox 12y ago
I personally don't find it as sinister as you make it sound. It's mostly just a user interface/experience issue. I don't see much relevance to privacy issues or the cloudification of life.
- snarkyturtle 12y ago
  Did you completely miss the hundreds of nude celebrity photos taken from the cloud two weeks ago?
  - baddox 12y ago
    I'm not referring to that situation. I'm saying that I don't find any particular relevance of the U2 situation to the celebrity photo scandal.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  It didn't sound sinister to me, just desperate.
jiggy2011 12y ago
In the cloud do you even have a "collection"? It's nothing as tangible as a rack of CDs or even an mp3 file, in this case it is just a UI abstraction over a set of database flags.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Even an mp3 is a UI abstraction over a set of database flags, if you consider the bits on your hard drive to be a database. The cloud provider has a collection, you have access to their collection, and your curated section of their collection is your playlist.
hawleyal 12y ago
Google music does it all the time.
- myko 12y ago
  This is opt-in though isn't it? When I signed up for Google Music it asked me what types of music I'm interested in and if it should auto-add similar music to my library.
  - wldcordeiro 12y ago
    It doesn't even add them to your library, it shows them on your main page as recommendations that you can add to the library.
swang 12y ago
Didn't this help U2's album sales on iTunes? It seems like it worked out pretty well for them and for Apple.
pan69 12y ago
Isn't this merely a continuation of what they started in 2004 when they released their then new album and their entire back catelog on a black and red iPod? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgohSbKMb-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgohSbKMb-8 https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-the-U2-iPod.html https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-...

joezydeco 12y ago

My gut feeling is that Cook & Company wanted to be able to pull a Jobs-like move upon announcement "The album is completely free to everyone and IN YOUR IPOD RIGHT NOW" ...especially since everything else announced was a wait (for the phone) or WAY away (like the watch).

baddox 12y ago

I personally don't find it as sinister as you make it sound. It's mostly just a user interface/experience issue. I don't see much relevance to privacy issues or the cloudification of life.

snarkyturtle 12y ago
Did you completely miss the hundreds of nude celebrity photos taken from the cloud two weeks ago?
- baddox 12y ago
  I'm not referring to that situation. I'm saying that I don't find any particular relevance of the U2 situation to the celebrity photo scandal.
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
It didn't sound sinister to me, just desperate.

jiggy2011 12y ago

In the cloud do you even have a "collection"? It's nothing as tangible as a rack of CDs or even an mp3 file, in this case it is just a UI abstraction over a set of database flags.

freehunter 12y ago
Even an mp3 is a UI abstraction over a set of database flags, if you consider the bits on your hard drive to be a database. The cloud provider has a collection, you have access to their collection, and your curated section of their collection is your playlist.

hawleyal 12y ago

Google music does it all the time.

myko 12y ago
This is opt-in though isn't it? When I signed up for Google Music it asked me what types of music I'm interested in and if it should auto-add similar music to my library.
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  It doesn't even add them to your library, it shows them on your main page as recommendations that you can add to the library.

swang 12y ago

Didn't this help U2's album sales on iTunes? It seems like it worked out pretty well for them and for Apple.

pan69 12y ago

Isn't this merely a continuation of what they started in 2004 when they released their then new album and their entire back catelog on a black and red iPod? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgohSbKMb-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgohSbKMb-8 https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-the-U2-iPod.html https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-...