It was a bizarre choice to throw the album into everyone's library, rather than just feature it on the iTunes front page as a free download. They probably wanted people to discover the album faux-serendipitously, but I feel they showed a profound lack of understanding of (or disregard for) people's music listening habits and preferences.
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.
You are certainly right, in my opinion, but I think that it's even more important to note how tone-deaf this move was in light of the recent iCloud leaks (I'd argue, in fact, that all of Apple's recent press conference was similarly confused).
Nobody wants to think about the idea that Apple can do/see anything they want at any time to our music collections and phones. Even if that isn't strictly true, and even if they probably wouldn't, it's a perception that's being confirmed by recent events, and this stunt re-enforced it.
I honestly think it was accidental. It looks like a classic case of a simple executive decision that appeared so trivial as to skip a careful consideration of the implementation.
Which isn't to excuse it: it was very un-Apple-like. And it certainly wasn't the only un-Apple-like turn last week.
I kind of thought people in the tech community were just overreacting, but I've since heard plenty of people who don't follow tech news complain that it was creepy or weird or something similar.
The album was shown as purchased in the iTunes Store app but there was no way to download the files, i.e., to have the album in my own library instead of just the ability to stream it via the iTunes Store.
A well-known BitTorrent search engine let me solve the issue.
This was an interesting marketing failure. Looking at the Twitter feed for 'u2 iphone', it was clear that a lot of people took umbrage at what they thought was an invasion of their music library, or thought they had been hacked, or otherwise felt it was a mistake.
Then the word spread that the album had been given away for free. But U2 and Apple had gone to great pains to explain that Apple "bought" the album for its users as a gift.
I feel sorry for the support people who had to field calls about this stuff this week. What a half-baked marketing stunt.
"At one point Thursday afternoon, 26 U2 titles charted simultaneously on iTunes top 200 albums rankings, Apple and Interscope Records representatives confirmed to Mashable on Friday. Meanwhile, U218 Singles landed in the top 10 in 46 countries."
It makes me wonder about the mindset of the people setting these kinds of policies.
It's easy in hindsight to cast aspersions, but to me it seemed prima facie an 'invasion' of a private space. Like, Apple decided that owning a U2 album was now mandatory.
I'm reminded of that Page quote last year where he dismissed any Google Glass privacy concerns.
I don't have a good articulation for this yet, but it seems an awful lot of people are blind to the alienation these systems are capable of causing.
This is a direct link. It looks like a scam website, especially the form that pops up after you press "Remove Album". I would never trust that if I were a person literate enough to know where not to enter your passwords, but not enough to know about SSL certificates.
This is very unclear:
"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."
Huh, so if I remove it from my account, it will be no longer available for a "redownload" but then I can just "get it again"? Lots of vague sentences here.
I'd venture to say nothing is "hastily" done at a company Apple's size but perhaps in this case it was... also seems to present consistently on multiple iProducts with no reactive crappola.
I find it fascinating how polarised a lot of the comments are. It's either:
* People will complain about anything. Why be so ungrateful? You don't like it; fine, don't listen.
* How did Apple ever think they could get away with this? It's invading my personal music library.
Fundamentally, it seems that people have very different mental models of what a 'cloud' computing service is. For some people, it's still 'their' music/library, and so this is an invasion. Maybe that's how it should be in an ideal world, but it's not how it currently is. Hopefully, for these people, they'll come away with a better understanding of some of the tradeoffs we make when we decide to use cloud services, even if we don't realise it at the time.
This is probably all made worse because iTunes started as a non-cloud service, but is now some weird hybrid, which is probably why there are such differing attitudes towards it.
I think we can all agree this was a marketing fubar though. A download link would've been much better, and hopefully Apple will realise just how confusing their current set-up is, with even some people who wanted the album not being able to figure out how to get it...
I'm guessing that this decision had a lot to do with U2 looking at their legacy.
With this push release, they can claim their album is on the most devices ever, most listened to album ever, etc, while still collecting a large pay check from Apple at the same time. If apple wrote the contract in such a way that each download is considered a sale, then U2 suddenly has the most successful album of all time in terms of "sales".
I don't think there is anything wrong with this if its the case, but with their history of success and age, its understandable if they start looking at their career in terms of how they rank against bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
To clarify for some people, this in now way is to "blame" U2 for this. I'm just trying to see this from the U2 perspective.
Blaming U2, or shifting a sizable chunk of the blame to U2, seems like Apple apologist talk.
It just doesn't sound like Bono and The Edge (does he capitalize the "The"?) to sit around and discuss the nuance of forced installs vs a free download. I doubt they would be so insecure in their place in pop history to "force" one group of specific technology users to download their album.
My personal theory is that Tim Cook wanted to have something that was "his" in keeping the iPhone as part of the cultural zeitgeist and not just another really good smart phone. Steve had his pursuit of the Beatles , Tim has his "gift" of U2.
According to Billboard magazine, U2's last tour took in a total revenue of USD $736,137,344 (about €569,000,000)[1].
U2 could have given the album away for free as a loss-leader for the tour. The fact that Apple paid USD $100,000,000 for the album and U2 gets all that free promotion for the next tour? They totally won on this.
This was such a dumb idea. Just make the thing free, and if people want it they'll get it. Bad time to be doing anything that could be construed as "creepy", when you're getting into the payments business.
After seeing this article, I looked into my music library in my iPhone, and sure enough, there it was. What a jarring experience. Especially since I've been wanting to clean up my music library for a while now, to get rid of old songs that I don't listen to. I don't appreciate Apple thwarting my efforts there.
Content providers don't seem to understand the value of permanently discarding unwanted content. They don't grasp the scale of the typical user's music (or book, or game, or whatever) library, and the user's mental capacity for managing it. I've stopped using Starbucks' "pick of the week" precisely because I _don't_want_ most of what I download & hear from them; I've already some 500 albums that I bought & know, and don't need hundreds (or just dozens) more unwanted one-track "albums", or even full albums, cluttering up the list. I'd like to give a new album/band a chance with a free download, but not if I can't make 'em go away (be it at all, or with convoluted effort) as most I don't care to keep.
Worse, AFAIK Apple still hasn't restored/fixed the swipe-and-tap-to-delete option for music put on a device via iTunes Match. Allowing the notion of having a vast permanent collection of all my purchased audio content in the cloud (whether I wish to keep that content or not), there's no sane way to remove downloaded material from individual devices. I've several large fragments of audiobooks taking up gigabytes on my phone which I desperately want to delete, but the only way seems to wipe ALL "music" and re-download what I want (and with some pretty scary-worded warnings in the process).
Yes, content providers, there's some content I've "purchased" but no longer want. Please give me a way to remove it from my life, permanently.
They do let you hide purchases so that they won't show up on in the music list on iOS and iTunes. They won't let you delete a purchase, which makes sense.
It's confusing because they're using purchase history as a basis for your entire library, which might not sync up with your mindset for your music list. I've definitely hidden past purchases that I know I'll never need easy access to.
Honest question: is there any compelling reason to tie the account you buy songs from to your device? It seems to me that the way the manage your music for you is more of a nuisance than anything else.
Maybe I should restate the question in more general sense. I keep my gmail logged out while I browse, I never connect my kindle to wifi, because I find all of these integration moves to be more of a nuisance than anything else. So in general hat's in it for me? what's good reason to sell all of my data to large_tech_company, as opposed to just some of it?
Don't they have to download it to everybody's library for U2 to get the credit for a digital download/purchase?
This looks similar to the way Jay-Z sold a million+ of Magna Carta Holy Grail a year ago. Get a deal with a smart phone company to bundle their album with new units. Then show the RIAA the digital download stats, and bam! Platinum status.
I guess in this case the album is pushed to existing devices, but as long as somebody pays for the sale (even if its 'pre-bought' by a company or through a deal) it still counts. Seems like the new way to fudge numbers.
I heard a lot of people complain that the album had been automatically added to their library. I'm glad that they made a simple way for people with limited knowledge to remove it.
I still don't understand why the songs were automatically added and downloaded. Why were they not simply made available for free on iTunes?
If they were made free, they wouldn't be getting all the publicity.
It seems like big artists are now using quirky ways and partnerships to release albums in order to drum up publicity and increase reach.
Jay Z pre-released his last album with Samsung as an app. Beyonce released an album completely by surprise. Now U2 releases an album where iOS users just get it by default.
I think it depends on your icloud settings. If you set music to automatically download when added to your library, the song would just pop up on your device.
This is very unwarranted of Apple to push content without user permission. Just because it's free doesn't mean I want it. There's a reason many parties have a "no gift" policy. People don't want stuff just because it's free.
I have this exact same problem on google music. They give you tons of free pop stuff and I HATE almost all of it. There's no way that I have discovered to remove it from your library either (at least from the phone's interface). This prevents me from shuffling all the songs in my library because 90% of them are shit pop songs I don't like.
Edit:
It appears you can remove songs one at a time. But you cannot remove entire albums Google has added to your library. see: http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN
I've been (politely, but firmly) going back and forth with iTunes support on this and had already written a draft to Tim Cook that I planned to send today. This is welcome news.
On a side note, how likely is it that we'll ever hear a correction from U2's record label as to the success of the launch? Spoiler: no chance.
Edit:
> Bono added that Apple had "paid" for the giveaway…
I wonder if there is a long-term strategy behind it, and this is a first step towards getting consumers to accept content being pushed onto their devices. Ads, basically. By giving away a new album, they get consumers to think of pushed content as something good, as free stuff.
Perhaps next time it will be only half of the album. Or the tracks will only play 5 times before they're removed again.
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ivraatiems|11 years ago|reply
Nobody wants to think about the idea that Apple can do/see anything they want at any time to our music collections and phones. Even if that isn't strictly true, and even if they probably wouldn't, it's a perception that's being confirmed by recent events, and this stunt re-enforced it.
[+] [-] roc|11 years ago|reply
Which isn't to excuse it: it was very un-Apple-like. And it certainly wasn't the only un-Apple-like turn last week.
[+] [-] vlunkr|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmars|11 years ago|reply
The album was shown as purchased in the iTunes Store app but there was no way to download the files, i.e., to have the album in my own library instead of just the ability to stream it via the iTunes Store.
A well-known BitTorrent search engine let me solve the issue.
[+] [-] tpurves|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idlewords|11 years ago|reply
Then the word spread that the album had been given away for free. But U2 and Apple had gone to great pains to explain that Apple "bought" the album for its users as a gift.
I feel sorry for the support people who had to field calls about this stuff this week. What a half-baked marketing stunt.
[+] [-] valgaze|11 years ago|reply
"At one point Thursday afternoon, 26 U2 titles charted simultaneously on iTunes top 200 albums rankings, Apple and Interscope Records representatives confirmed to Mashable on Friday. Meanwhile, U218 Singles landed in the top 10 in 46 countries."
http://mashable.com/2014/09/12/u2-album-itunes-chart-apple-r...
[+] [-] phillmv|11 years ago|reply
It's easy in hindsight to cast aspersions, but to me it seemed prima facie an 'invasion' of a private space. Like, Apple decided that owning a U2 album was now mandatory.
I'm reminded of that Page quote last year where he dismissed any Google Glass privacy concerns.
I don't have a good articulation for this yet, but it seems an awful lot of people are blind to the alienation these systems are capable of causing.
[+] [-] hoopism|11 years ago|reply
I am sure it wasn't the intended purpose... but there's a lot of pub on this... and it certainly doesn't seem to be affecting sales.
[+] [-] fwr|11 years ago|reply
This is a direct link. It looks like a scam website, especially the form that pops up after you press "Remove Album". I would never trust that if I were a person literate enough to know where not to enter your passwords, but not enough to know about SSL certificates.
[+] [-] jtzhou|11 years ago|reply
Huh, so if I remove it from my account, it will be no longer available for a "redownload" but then I can just "get it again"? Lots of vague sentences here.
[+] [-] thefreeman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoopism|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osmium|11 years ago|reply
* People will complain about anything. Why be so ungrateful? You don't like it; fine, don't listen.
* How did Apple ever think they could get away with this? It's invading my personal music library.
Fundamentally, it seems that people have very different mental models of what a 'cloud' computing service is. For some people, it's still 'their' music/library, and so this is an invasion. Maybe that's how it should be in an ideal world, but it's not how it currently is. Hopefully, for these people, they'll come away with a better understanding of some of the tradeoffs we make when we decide to use cloud services, even if we don't realise it at the time.
This is probably all made worse because iTunes started as a non-cloud service, but is now some weird hybrid, which is probably why there are such differing attitudes towards it.
I think we can all agree this was a marketing fubar though. A download link would've been much better, and hopefully Apple will realise just how confusing their current set-up is, with even some people who wanted the album not being able to figure out how to get it...
[+] [-] chollida1|11 years ago|reply
With this push release, they can claim their album is on the most devices ever, most listened to album ever, etc, while still collecting a large pay check from Apple at the same time. If apple wrote the contract in such a way that each download is considered a sale, then U2 suddenly has the most successful album of all time in terms of "sales".
I don't think there is anything wrong with this if its the case, but with their history of success and age, its understandable if they start looking at their career in terms of how they rank against bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
To clarify for some people, this in now way is to "blame" U2 for this. I'm just trying to see this from the U2 perspective.
[+] [-] jbigelow76|11 years ago|reply
It just doesn't sound like Bono and The Edge (does he capitalize the "The"?) to sit around and discuss the nuance of forced installs vs a free download. I doubt they would be so insecure in their place in pop history to "force" one group of specific technology users to download their album.
My personal theory is that Tim Cook wanted to have something that was "his" in keeping the iPhone as part of the cultural zeitgeist and not just another really good smart phone. Steve had his pursuit of the Beatles , Tim has his "gift" of U2.
[+] [-] joezydeco|11 years ago|reply
U2 could have given the album away for free as a loss-leader for the tour. The fact that Apple paid USD $100,000,000 for the album and U2 gets all that free promotion for the next tour? They totally won on this.
[1] http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/touring/1176894/u...
[+] [-] billiam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
Dumb.
[+] [-] vidoc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kronopath|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewtbham|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
Content providers don't seem to understand the value of permanently discarding unwanted content. They don't grasp the scale of the typical user's music (or book, or game, or whatever) library, and the user's mental capacity for managing it. I've stopped using Starbucks' "pick of the week" precisely because I _don't_want_ most of what I download & hear from them; I've already some 500 albums that I bought & know, and don't need hundreds (or just dozens) more unwanted one-track "albums", or even full albums, cluttering up the list. I'd like to give a new album/band a chance with a free download, but not if I can't make 'em go away (be it at all, or with convoluted effort) as most I don't care to keep.
Worse, AFAIK Apple still hasn't restored/fixed the swipe-and-tap-to-delete option for music put on a device via iTunes Match. Allowing the notion of having a vast permanent collection of all my purchased audio content in the cloud (whether I wish to keep that content or not), there's no sane way to remove downloaded material from individual devices. I've several large fragments of audiobooks taking up gigabytes on my phone which I desperately want to delete, but the only way seems to wipe ALL "music" and re-download what I want (and with some pretty scary-worded warnings in the process).
Yes, content providers, there's some content I've "purchased" but no longer want. Please give me a way to remove it from my life, permanently.
[+] [-] jmreid|11 years ago|reply
It's confusing because they're using purchase history as a basis for your entire library, which might not sync up with your mindset for your music list. I've definitely hidden past purchases that I know I'll never need easy access to.
[+] [-] carlob|11 years ago|reply
Maybe I should restate the question in more general sense. I keep my gmail logged out while I browse, I never connect my kindle to wifi, because I find all of these integration moves to be more of a nuisance than anything else. So in general hat's in it for me? what's good reason to sell all of my data to large_tech_company, as opposed to just some of it?
[+] [-] dharbin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuxidomasx|11 years ago|reply
This looks similar to the way Jay-Z sold a million+ of Magna Carta Holy Grail a year ago. Get a deal with a smart phone company to bundle their album with new units. Then show the RIAA the digital download stats, and bam! Platinum status.
I guess in this case the album is pushed to existing devices, but as long as somebody pays for the sale (even if its 'pre-bought' by a company or through a deal) it still counts. Seems like the new way to fudge numbers.
[+] [-] allegory|11 years ago|reply
Both my kids turned up yesterday and asked me why the hell I put U2 on their iPads.
[+] [-] wahsd|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] knd775|11 years ago|reply
I still don't understand why the songs were automatically added and downloaded. Why were they not simply made available for free on iTunes?
[+] [-] ssharp|11 years ago|reply
It seems like big artists are now using quirky ways and partnerships to release albums in order to drum up publicity and increase reach.
Jay Z pre-released his last album with Samsung as an app. Beyonce released an album completely by surprise. Now U2 releases an album where iOS users just get it by default.
[+] [-] ripter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayoone|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] general_failure|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnarbarian|11 years ago|reply
Edit:
It appears you can remove songs one at a time. But you cannot remove entire albums Google has added to your library. see: http://imgur.com/a/CrsKN
It appears you CAN do this from the website.
[+] [-] Tiksi|11 years ago|reply
With the web interface you can mass delete as well.
Edit: I also don't recall getting any free pop stuff, maybe it's related to having the
"Keep me up to date with news and offers from Google Play Music All Access"
option unchecked in my settings?
[+] [-] dag11|11 years ago|reply
How is this happening to you?
[+] [-] laurencerowe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Argorak|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fakeasaur|11 years ago|reply
On the upside I got another episode of 'U Talkin' U2 to Me?'
[+] [-] collyw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alsetmusic|11 years ago|reply
On a side note, how likely is it that we'll ever hear a correction from U2's record label as to the success of the launch? Spoiler: no chance.
Edit: > Bono added that Apple had "paid" for the giveaway…
I was too quick to post without reading.
[+] [-] Luc|11 years ago|reply
Perhaps next time it will be only half of the album. Or the tracks will only play 5 times before they're removed again.
[+] [-] misuba|11 years ago|reply