Features
With Or Without U2
Having just made the new U2 album freely available to about 500 million iTunes users spread around the globe, Apple has come up with a tool that will enable its customers to remove it.
Photo: AP Photo
Apple CEO Tim Cook with members of U2, Cupertino, Calif.
It seems a substantial number of iTune customers complained that they didn’t dig the band’s Songs of Innocence, even if it was free as part of Apple’s iPhone 6 and Watch launch.
U2 played at the launch event at Cupertino, Calif., just as going live for 500 million iTunes users. Some users complained because the album automatically arrived without their permission.
In the lead-up to the iPhone launch, U2 frontman Bono saw a silver lining in the potential problem.
“People who haven’t heard our music, or weren’t remotely interested, might play us for the first time because we’re in their library,” he wrote on the band’s website. “And for the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way… the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail.”
Apple has introduced a one-click removal button.
“It’s embarrassing for Apple that it’s had a bit of a backlash,” Ian Maude from media consultancy Enders Analysis told BBC News.