Bono takes the blame for the 2014 iTunes U2 album disaster

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 26
    lkrupp said:
    Appleish said:
    Can't believe this is still a thing. Buncha snowflakes were outraged because they received a free album. Boo-hoo-hoo!

    I'm not a U2 fan. I recognize that they are a talented, important band in history, but they were never my cup of tea. I ignored the free gift.
    You ignored the free gift, which is what a rational person would do, but a whole bunch of people aren’t rational. Could the album’s cover art been part of the problem for the more conservative types?
    LOL! I had zero memory of the cover. You may be onto something.
    davwatto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 26
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,384member
    hodar said:
    Bono may have agreed to “give it away”; but let’s take a moment of honesty.  Bono has ZERO authority to speak on behalf of what iTunes (Apple) actually DID

    Apple is the Company responsible for force feeding unwanted music onto millions of devices.  Not U2.  Apple did the deed
    The fact that you’re still seemingly in a rage about this pretty benign incident almost a decade later says a lot more about you, than anyone else. Jesus Christ. Get some air. It’s pretty pathetic. 
    kiowawadavwatto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 26
    I downloaded it.  Would not have otherwise.  Became a much bigger U2 fan, bought other albums, still listen to it often.  Especially when out jogging.  
    dewmedavwatto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 26
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    slurpy said:
    hodar said:
    Bono may have agreed to “give it away”; but let’s take a moment of honesty.  Bono has ZERO authority to speak on behalf of what iTunes (Apple) actually DID

    Apple is the Company responsible for force feeding unwanted music onto millions of devices.  Not U2.  Apple did the deed
    The fact that you’re still seemingly in a rage about this pretty benign incident almost a decade later says a lot more about you, than anyone else. Jesus Christ. Get some air. It’s pretty pathetic. 
    I hardly think commenting in a thread about the subject of a PR exercise gone wrong, saying that it went wrong and attributing it, qualifies as "still in a rage".  Has hodar mentioned this anywhere else?

    A pretty shallow attempt to cynically demean and/or smear someone.  Grow up.
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 25 of 26
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,362member
    It’s not like Apple was throwing AOL CDs into every iPhone box. That would have been rude. No actual landfills were harmed if you didn’t want to download the U2 album.

    Even though Bono takes full responsibility for any backlash, real or imagined, that this situation caused, I think it says more about where Tim Cook and the leadership team’s heads were at in the moment. Apple under Steve Jobs had a long standing constructive relationship with Bono and Apple has always had a special place for music in general at a cultural or DNA level in the company.

    As others have pointed out with respect to product announcement events, the ones that took place early in the Tim Cook tenure tried to continue to follow the standard established by Steve Jobs. Steve’s influence was still front and center, closer to the surface, and no doubt had at least a subliminal influence on the U2 give away scheme. In the years since then Steve’s influence has become more integrated with Apple’s foundational culture but it is no longer as front and center or near the surface. It’s still there, but different.

    Steve Jobs was the face of Apple. Tim Cook will never be the face of Apple. This is very likely exactly the way Tim Cook wants it to be. The product announcements featuring the large cast of contributors plays into the notion that there is no single face of Apple anymore, it’s a large team effort and one that changes in terms of who gets to be front and center from event to event. Tim Cook still bookends the presentations, and is clearly the leader of Apple, but he truly appears to want to put this larger team out there front and center as being a truer reflection of what the face of Apple looks like today. I am totally cool with this approach.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 26 of 26
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    dewme said:
    It’s not like Apple was throwing AOL CDs into every iPhone box. That would have been rude. No actual landfills were harmed if you didn’t want to download the U2 album. 
    IIRC it was a forced download.  A huge amount of energy was expended delivering something to millions of people that none of them asked for and a lot of them did not want.
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