iTunes customers who didn’t watch Apple’s iPhone keynote last month were a bit surprised to discover that they suddenly owned a copy of U2’s new album “Songs of Innocence,” even though they’d never bought it. The band had partnered with Apple to add the album to every single iTunes account for free in what they called the largest album debut ever.
iTunes users were less than thrilled at the arrangement, noting that the album was being automatically downloaded to their devices in many cases and there was no way to remove it from their purchase history. Apple responded soon thereafter by releasing an online tool to remove the album, but thus far U2 has remained quiet on the issue… until today.
Today the members of the band released a video on Facebook in which they answered questions from fans about a variety of topics. Two and a half minutes in, a user named Harriet Madeline Jobson asked, “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to peoples [sic] playlists ever again? It’s really rude.”
Bono took the question, opening his response with “oops, sorry about that.” He went on to call the plan “a beautiful idea” but noted that the band had probably “gotten away with ourselves.” The singer added that because there is so much “noise” in the music industry, the band “got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”
[youtube http://youtu.be/t6x9LHKiSg0?t=2m20s]
