Free U2 album on iTunes? It’s Bono’s fault!

Bono apologizes for the free U2 album on iTunes. A real lesson in humility for the group.

Remember in 2014 U2 gave away the album to all iTunes users around the world? It turned out that most of these users did not need this album, so much so that Apple had to release a special tool to remove it. “It was completely my fault,” the singer Bono said in an article for The Guardian.

Bono apologizes for free U2 album on iTunes

When Bono approached Tim Cook, along with Eddie Cue and Phil Schiller, to pitch him the idea, he couldn’t believe it. “Are you really talking about free music?”the Apple CEO then asked, according to Bono. “But the whole point is for artists to get paid.”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t think we’ll give it away for free. I think you pay us for it and then give it away for free, as a gift to users. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”Bono wrote.

Tim Cook raised an eyebrow. — You mean that we pay for the album and then distribute it? I said, “Yes, like when Netflix buys a movie and distributes it to their subscribers.”Tim looked at me as if I was explaining the alphabet to the teacher. “But we don’t work on a subscription model,” Tim Cook said in an excerpt. “Not yet,” I replied. “Let’s be first.”Tim was not convinced. “And this is just for users who like U2?””Well,”I said, “I think we should give it to everyone.”So it’s up to them to decide whether to listen to it or not.”

A real lesson in humility for the group

This will serve as a real lesson in humility for the group when they realize that most users not only don’t want to listen to it, they don’t even want to have it in their library.

“As one social media expert put it, ‘I woke up this morning to find Bono sitting in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing a bathrobe and reading a newspaper.’ Or, less kindly, “this free U2 album is too expensive.”Mea Culpa,” he wrote. “I take full responsibility. It’s not [U2 manager] Guy O, it’s not Edge, it’s not Adam, it’s not Larry, it’s not Tim Cook, it’s not Eddie Cue. I thought that if we could just introduce our music to people, they would want to listen to it. Not really.’”

Bono also remembers something happier with Apple on the iPod, which, by the way, celebrated its 21st birthday a few days ago. It was U2 who convinced Steve Jobs to let them star in famous commercials. It’s also the group that convinced him to make the U2 version of the iPad in black with a red wheel. It was also the first time the iPod wasn’t white. Fun fact: The group also asked Steve Jobs for a few Apple shares, even a token number, but he refused in his usual direct style: “Sorry,”he said, according to Good. “This is a breach of the terms of the deal.”