Ashley Santore, Staff Writer
The new album “Songs of Innocence” by U2 managed to make its way onto 500 million iTunes users’ accounts in 119 countries.
Apple and U2 have been collaborating for ten years and have partnered in TV commercials and the first edition IPod. Recently U2 and Apple have made a $10 million deal to get U2’s latest album, “Songs of Innocence” on every Apple device. After being available for only three days it was downloaded 2 million times, and overall 33 million customers downloaded this album. These users include people who downloaded the album from their iTunes account, streamed it, or used iTunes Radio to listen to it. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software and Services, Eddy Cue called the numbers, “record breaking.”
Since this latest release, 17 of U2’s prior albums are currently on ITunes top 100. As this publicity was a good thing for the band, it has also caused some negative feedback among the Apple users. Most people did not want this album on their ITunes account, and Apple later released a tool for customers to remove it off their phone. Nate Harrison from Twitter said, “I will pay Apple/U2 to take the album off my phone.” Adam M from Twitter said, “Why is there a U2 album on my phone? Am I still asleep? Is this a nightmare? Am I cursed?”
After all the negative feedback U2’s manager, Guy Oseary replied, “It’s a gift from Apple, if someone doesn’t like the gift, they should delete it. There are people who are going to be thrilled to get a gift. There are people who are not going to care to have this gift. We knew all of that going in. No surprises here. If someone doesn’t like it, then great, that’s OK, delete it. We just want to share it with as many people as possible. If you don’t want it and don’t need it, delete it.”
Does this advance or society, or is it just an invasion of privacy. If Apple was able to put this album on our accounts via ICloud then does it mean they can also take things off and look at your personal information?
NHS Freshman Olivia Mubarek said, “I think it is an invasion of privacy because I mean not everyone wants that on their phone or likes that music and it also takes up my storage.”
Apple said, “At Apple, music has always been a big part of who we are and what we do. This is the biggest album release in music history and one more way of moving music forward.”
Photo Credit;iphonecanadia.com