14 DAY TRIAL // The last U2 album caused quite a stir and not necessarily because of exceptional reviews but mostly because it was offered for free on all iTunes accounts by Apple in a move that was seen as shameless self-promotion.
Normally, no one would gripe about a free U2 album, except not everyone is a fan of the band and many users found that the album was forcibly added to their accounts taking up precious space. To make matters worse, they weren’t able to remove it at will.
Bono finally addressed the free album scandal, said he was sorry
Bono, the frontman for the band, is now doing a mea culpa on social media, apologizing to fans for the album few wanted and which ended up on everyone's iTunes account. In an interview on Facebook, Sono addressed the “Songs of Innocence” debacle.
One Facebook user by the name of Harriet Madeleine Jobson complained to the artist about the album she couldn't get rid of, “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people's playlists ever again? It's really rude.”
Bono said, “Oops. I'm sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea -- might have got carried away with it ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing. A drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs that we'd poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard. There's a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it,” looking genuinely embarrassed.
The album was meant as a gift to iTunes users but turned out to be a nuisance
When the Apple Watch came out in September, Bono took the stage with the company’s CEO Tim Cook and announced that the band's latest album would be offered for free as a “treat” to all iTunes users. They made it sound like people would be able to download it at will, but it was soon discovered that it was automatically downloaded to all accounts.
The company later fixed the issue, by allowing customers to remove the album from their respective libraries and also to redownload it if they ever wanted to. The album was free for download until October 13.
Though it wasn't that big of a bother and the issue was eventually solved, the experience has left users with a bad taste in their mouth as to the invasive aspect of free campaigns under the Apple logo. Of course, U2 takes its share of the blame, admitting that they went overboard, but they explained they were eager to get their message across.