But that was all dwarfed by the moment when Cook brought out U2 to announce their new album Songs of Innocence, which had been commissioned by the tech company and would be made available to each and every one of the over half billion iTunes customers at no cost. And instantly, whether any of us liked it or not, the album was automatically added to the "purchased" sections of our music libraries and downloaded to our personal devices.
According to Apple, 33 million people accessed the album in its first week of release, either by downloading it from the iCloud account, streaming it, or listening to it through iTunes' radio player. A month after the surprise release, Eddy Cue, Apple's VP of internet software and services, told Billboard that the album had earned 26 million complete downloads with over 81 million Apple customers listening to it in some capacity.
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A week later, on September 15, Apple launched a dedicated removal page for the album, telling customers, "If you would like U2's Songs of Innocence removed from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases, you can choose ti have it removed. 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." After warning that if the user wanted the album after October 13, they'd have to pay for it, the page asked, "Do you want to remove Songs of Innocence from your account?" A button that read "Remove Album" appeared beneath the question.
While Bono told NPR he was unaware of the automatic download option in October, he described the "kerfuffle" as: "We wanted to deliver a pint of milk to people's front porches, but in a few cases it ended up in their fridge, on their cereal. People were like, 'I'm dairy-free.'"
The lead single "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" was featured in an Apple television advertisement as part of a promotional campaign for the band on which the company reportedly spent US$100 million. Approximately 81 million iTunes users listened to the album in its first month of release, 26 million of whom downloaded the entire record. Songs of Innocence received generally mixed reviews and drew criticism for its digital release; the album was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts, which for many triggered an unprompted download to their electronic devices. Upon its commercial release, Songs of Innocence sold just 101,000 copies in North America and charted for just eight and nine weeks in the US and UK, respectively. The group's press tour for the album was interrupted after Bono was seriously injured in a bicycle accident. The record received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Album. U2 supported the album with the successful Innocence + Experience Tour in 2015, and followed it up with a companion record, Songs of Experience, in 2017.
Bono rejected the notion that U2 had given the album away at no cost, saying: "We were paid. I don't believe in free music. Music is a sacrament."[82] Apple reportedly paid a lump sum to the band and Universal Music Group (UMG) for a five-week exclusivity window in which to distribute Songs of Innocence.[83] According to Billboard's estimates, Apple could have paid either US$52 million to UMG for exclusive rights to the album based on the quantity of downloads, or an upfront fee of about $5 million excluding royalties.[84] In addition, Apple agreed to a marketing campaign for the album reportedly worth around $100 million, which kicked off with a television advertisement featuring "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)".[80] Apple's partnership with U2 dates back to 2004; in promotion of the band's album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, its first single, "Vertigo", was featured in an internationally aired iPod television advertisement, while a U2 iPod and an iTunes-exclusive U2 digital box set were also released.[85] The release of Songs of Innocence drew comparisons to that of two 2013 records: Jay-Z's Magna Carta Holy Grail, which was sponsored by Samsung;[79][86] and Beyoncé's self-titled album, which also was released without any prior promotion or notice.[79][87]
According to Apple, 33 million people accessed the album in its first week of release, either through iTunes downloads or streaming.[91] Within its first month of release, 81 million users had listened to it and 26 million had downloaded the entire record, according to Apple executive Eddy Cue.[84]
U2's decision to allow free downloads of Songs of Innocence was questioned by musicians, including the Black Keys' Patrick Carney and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.[92][93] Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson believed it devalued music, saying U2 had "sent a message to everyone that music is free, and that's disturbing. It's easy to do that when you're a multi-millionaire-billionaire and money isn't really something that you worry about, but when you're a working rock 'n' roll band and you count on every dollar, it's disappointing to see someone do that."[94] The Entertainment Retailers Association reported that UK sales of the band's back catalogue were minimal in the week following the album's release. The organisation's chairman Paul Quirk said: "This vindicates our view that giving away hundreds of millions of albums simply devalues music and runs the risk of alienating the 60% of the population who are not customers of iTunes ... Giving away music like this is as damaging to the value of music as piracy."[95]
Many iTunes customers were unhappy that the album was added to their music libraries without their consent.[96][97][98] For users with automatic music downloads enabled in iTunes, Songs of Innocence downloaded automatically to their electronic devices.[99][100] Chris Richards of The Washington Post called the release "rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail".[101] Slate said that it was "extremely unsettling" that "consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative".[102] Vijith Assar of Wired said, "The delivery mechanism amounts to nothing more than spam with forced downloads."[103] In response to the criticism, Apple created a dedicated page on their website to allow users to delete the album from their iTunes accounts.[104] Bono said he was unaware of the automatic download option.[105] Former U2 manager Paul McGuinness thought the album had been "positioned wrongly" and would not have offended anyone had there been a method to opt into receiving it.[106] Describing U2's and Apple's intentions, Bono said: "We wanted to deliver a pint of milk to people's front porches, but in a few cases it ended up in their fridge, on their cereal. People were like, 'I'm dairy-free.'"[105] Although he apologized to a fan during a Facebook Q&A session for the album's addition to their music library,[107] publicly he refused to offer an apology at the time, saying, "It's one of the proudest moments in U2's history."[39] In his 2022 memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, however,[108] Bono apologized for the album's digital release: "I take full responsibility... I'd thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite."[109]
U2 licensed several tracks from Songs of Innocence for use in the 2015 music video game Rock Band 4; "Cedarwood Road" was included with the game, while "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" and "California (There Is No End to Love)" were made available as downloadable content.[135]
In 2016, David Sackllah of Consequence of Sound said, "U2 and Apple deserve credit for thinking ambitiously, but they overestimated the band's relevance with fans, and many felt like the automatic download constituted an invasion of privacy."[183] In end-of-decade retrospectives, Rolling Stone[184] and Billboard included the album's no-cost iTunes release on their lists of the top music moments that defined the decade; Billboard said: "The failed strategy showed the perils of embedding music within technology so deeply (and so quasi-literally), and today, most Apple subscribers couldn't tell you a thing about Songs of Innocence besides the backlash."[185] Ed Power of The Telegraph labeled the promotion "the most idiotic launch in rock history" and attributed it to two factors: the determination of Apple CEO Tim Cook to "prove himself worthy of the groovy tech guru mantle he had inherited from his far more charismatic predecessor, the late Steve Jobs", and U2's "obsess[ion] with being the biggest band in the world".[186] In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked the album's iTunes release the 9th-worst decision in music history; journalist Andy Green wrote that the band's mentality of "thinking big" served them well earlier in their career but that they overstepped in making the album "show up for free to every single Apple user's personal devices. We're talking about a non-insignificant percent of planet Earth here, and it was quickly revealed that not everyone who owned a phone was by definition a U2 fan. The backlash was swift and brutal, especially since Songs of Innocence wasn't exactly another Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby in terms of quality."[187]
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I'm not sure how but the free U2 album got deleted off of my phone/iTunes. It still says purchased but I can't get to the songs anywhere and there's nowhere I can find that it says to download it, just the digital booklet. Is it possible for me to get the album back?
Hey AladyinSane, I understand that you would like to download the U2 album that was given away. That is something that I can help you with. What you want to do is look in the Purchases area in iTunes. Depending on what device you are using like your computer or iPhone, the steps will be slightly different. Take a look at the article below for more details.Download past purchases from iTunes -us/HT201272Take it easy 2ff7e9595c
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