My impression was that the iTunes stunt was not received well because they had already lost popularity. The iTunes stunt didn't help, but I doubt it materially hurt their popularity either.
To me, it exposed U2 to a bunch of people that had never heard of them, in a very bad light. Killing off any chance of new fans. Not that they would have grown in popularity, but that the trail off got much steeper.
I agree. Other things are going on. Rock has long been in decline, the social messages and trends U2 focused on 30-40 years ago have passed, and U2 is no longer breaking new musical ground like they were from the late 70s until Pop.
As a lifelong rock fan, it's really been sad to live through the long slow inexorable decline of the genre. The vast majority of current popular music doesn't appeal to me at all, which simply wasn't true even as recently as the 90s.
tyingq|5 years ago
ilamont|5 years ago
CydeWeys|5 years ago