U2 songs of innocence free#

'Every Breaking Wave' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Mysterious Ways' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Even Better Than the Real Thing' (Live from Paris, Dec.'The Fly' (Intermission Live from Glasgow, Nov.'Until the End of the World' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Raised by Wolves' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Sunday Bloody Sunday' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Song for Someone' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Cedarwood Road' (Live from Paris, Dec.'Iris (Hold Me Close)' (Live from Paris, Dec.'I Will Follow' (Live from Paris, Dec.'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)' (Live from Paris, Dec.

U2 songs of innocence free#

If free music were the key to wide acceptance and, ultimately, a more profitable music career, many musicians should have already made out like bandits.'Innocence + Experience Live in Paris' - U2 Video Release Track Listing (Main Disc): Whether that ultimately helps the group build a broader audience or not has yet to be seen. U2, on the other hand, has received much wider exposure than its albums would typically get and a handsome fee.

In other words, Apple couldn't succeed in giving the album away and ultimately felt enough pressure to give them a way to delete it. Many marketing campaigns might be happy with such a response, but this was a case of free content delivered to people's virtual doors with them having to take no action at all. That represents 6.7 percent of the 500 million iTunes customers Apple says it has. Update: Apple released a statement claiming that 33 million people had 'experienced' the U2 album, meaning that they had listened to some or all of it through streaming or downloading. Especially when you don't get the collector's version special cover art? Ah, well, Apple will weather this as it has other challenges and continue to rattle and hum along. The other is that, with $100 million in expense and 2 million downloads, $50 an album for a digital release is probably a bit much. One is never, never, never to let those over 40 decide what music they think younger consumers are bound to think is cool. Perhaps, as one writer in Wired put it, the U2 backlash was an expression of a ' completely indefensible expansion by Apple beyond its operational purview' that was 'worse than spam.' Or it could be that many Apple users have begun to see what central control of an ecosystem actually means, when you'd be better off depending on the kindness of strangers rather than people you thought were friends.Īpple finally got the message and created a website to allow customers to remove Songs of Innocence from their devices. Nothing like slipping into the category of classic rock. Apparently many younger Apple customers never heard of the Irish band. But is it really as bad as involuntarily finding, say, The Captain and Tennille's Muskrat Love in your collection? That is, if you recognize who the Captain and Tennille, or U2, are. The group's members appear in stadiums these days and can afford to live and work in whatever degree of comfortable swank they like.

Perhaps the backlash had something to do with the faded glory of the band, whose gritty roots in Dublin's dive bars are long in the past. One person wrote, 'Apple owes me a new iPhone, because I had to purify this one with fire after finding a U2 album on it.' Even with the people that presumably were pleased with finding Bono, the Edge, and the rest of the gang crooning to them, many were highly displeased.