A recent U2 interview posted on Facebook saw the band members taking questions from fans, and one of the questions concerned the automatic free download of U2’s Songs of Innocence album to iTunes playlists: “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to peoples [sic] playlists ever again? It’s really rude.” The album was accessible for free to 500 million iTunes customers; early estimates claimed 33 million users accessed the album.
The question was posed to U2 frontman Bono, who answered, “Oops. Um.
I’m sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea and we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing.
Drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, dash of self-promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years mightn’t be heard. There’s a lot of noise out there. I guess we — we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”
It’s clear that U2 is aware the idea wasn’t a big hit with everyone, and it will be interesting to see how Apple and the band progress with the reported joint “secret project” to boost digital music sales.
