Nobody seems to talk about how much Apple paid U2 for the right to give the album away for free. I suspect that U2 may have made more money from this album th

Nobody seems to talk about how much Apple paid U2 for the right to give the album away for free. I suspect that U2 may have made more money from this album than they did from the last-- and that's just in the free period. (after some amount of time it goes back up to normal price.) I bet even after it goes up to normal price it will do better due to the publicity of being free. I don't think Apple got the album for free. :-) All in all, I think it was a great deal. I didn't get the album pushed on me-- I went and chose to download it from iTunes-- and I think the "album as promotion for larger brand" method is kinda win-win. It's not relevancy U2 is chasing but awareness, and that's the trade they made with Apple. That plus bags of cash.