September 15, 2014: Responding to its disastrous U2 album giveaway, Apple offers iPhone homeowners with a instrument for wiping all indicators of Songs of Innocence from their telephones.
It comes after one of many strangest PR debacles in Apple historical past. After placing a free copy of U2’s newest launch on each iPhone proprietor’s handset as a particular promotion, thousands and thousands discover themselves with an album they didn’t order of their iTunes library. Many weren’t blissful about it.
Apple’s U2 album giveaway backfires
Apple and U2 shared a particular connection for years, with the band’s frontman, Bono, changing into good associates with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and design chief Jony Ive. Within the early 2000s, Apple used the band’s music “Vertigo” because the soundtrack for an iTunes advert. (The business helped make the music a success.) Apple additionally lent its help to Bono’s Product (Crimson) charity, devoted to wiping out HIV and AIDS.
Nonetheless, regardless of the success of those initiatives, the U2 album giveaway on September 9, 2014, got here off as a catastrophe. After lower than 1% of iTunes customers downloaded the freebie album on the primary day, Apple shoved Songs of Innocence down customers’ throats by mechanically pushing it to units. The detrimental fallout proved intense.
U2 album giveaway: A contact of megalomania
Bono later blamed the cock-up on getting carried away. He additionally mentioned it was based mostly on “megalomania, a contact of generosity, a touch of self-promotion, and deep worry that these songs that we poured our life into over the previous few years may not be heard.”
Apple appeared baffled by the backlash. From its perspective, it merely gave away a free album. The corporate definitely didn’t count on the form of response it acquired. In actual fact, Cupertino was so assured that it paid U2 and its document label a reported $100 million for the rights to Songs of Innocence.
On September 15, nevertheless, Apple relented. It revealed an online web page with particulars revealing how customers might wipe the brand new U2 album from their accounts. (Sadly, the web page is not energetic.)
As with all web outrages, U2-gate blew over earlier than lengthy. However Apple by no means repeated an analogous giveaway. Even when it does supply free trials of merchandise, it doesn’t assume customers will need to participate.