U2 songs of innocence software#
U2 songs of innocence mac#

Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to redownload as a previous purchase.

U2 songs of innocence software#

Nearly immediately, those of us who didn't necessarily want a new U2 album, free or not, taking up precious space on our iPhones discovered that deleting the thing wasn't nearly as seamless as its blink-of-an-eye arrival, with the usual slide-to-delete functionality in the Apple Music app not active for Songs of Innocence, leaving frustrated users forced to go to the 'Purchased' screen on iTunes' desktop software to hide it from their collections as a means of working around the unwanted gift.Ī week later, on September 15, Apple launched a dedicated removal page for the album, telling customers, 'If you would like U2's Songs of Innocence removed from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases, you can choose ti have it removed. Reps for Apple and U2 declined to comment on the deal terms.) ( Billboard estimated that UMG could've landed a $52 million payment for the exclusive rights, based on standard label profit from 26 million album sales, while an upfront fee, excluding royalties, was estimated to have been in the $5 million range. The Washington Post called it 'rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail.' Slateasserted that it was 'extremely unsettling' that 'consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative.' Musicians like the Black Keys' Patrick Carney and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason argued that the free release 'devalued' music, despite the fact that Apple paid a lump sum to the band and Universal Music Group for the five-week exclusivity window in which it distributed Songs of Innocence to its customers before it was physically released at retailers on October 13, 2014. Not everyone was thrilled by the disruption.Ĭritics of the move mobilized just as swiftly as the release they were decrying.

it's really punk rock, it's really disruptive.'

And instantly, whether any of us liked it or not, the album was automatically added to the 'purchased' sections of our music libraries and downloaded to our personal devices.Ĭook touted the release, which made the album available in 119 countries worldwide as 'the largest album release of all time.' U2 frontman Bono said the intention was to get new music to 'as many people as possible, because that's what our band is all about.' Guitarist The Edge later told TIME that the launch was 'actually incredible subversive.

Not only did the company unveil the iPhone 6, the eighth generation of their ubiquitous smartphone, but they also revealed what Cook described as 'the next chapter in Apple's story,' the Apple Watch.īut that was all dwarfed by the moment when Cook brought out U2 to announce their new album Songs of Innocence, which had been commissioned by the tech company and would be made available to each and every one of the over half billion iTunes customers at no cost.

U2 songs of innocence mac#

And the news announced by current CEO Tim Cook at the very site where the late Steve Jobs unveiled both the original Mac in 1984 and the first iMac in 1998 was pretty big. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and everyone was gearing up to hear what new Apple products the tech giant would be launching out of Cupertino at what would be the last of their famed launch events to be held in the Flint Center for the Performing Arts at De Anza College.