Apple has released a tool to remove U2’s new album from its customers’ iTunes accounts six days after giving away the music for free.
Some users had complained about the fact that Songs of Innocence had automatically been downloaded to their devices without their permission.
It had not been immediately obvious to many of the account holders how to delete the tracks.
The US tech firm now offers a one-click removal button.
Great headline. Great story. Great everything. This is just great.
Be interesting to know how many people yanked this thing off of their systems.
The U2 album thing was pretty outrageous, frankly.
They could have simply made it free to download, and sput out some media alerting the masses of its free availability.
But cramming it down EVERYONE’s throats? Outrageous. It really is. It’s just the most crass thing. It’s so presumptive.
It’s just more indicative of the luster falling off of Apple as they now feel compelled to drive after market share rather than simply focusing on product.
I saw it as more gimmicky than outrageous. Then again, I don’t have an iPhone (my only iDevice is a five year old iPod Shuffle that I only use when mowing the lawn) so maybe I would have been offended if they had forced it on me as well.
I do think it’s interesting that they intend to charge anyone who removes it and later decides they actually did want it. I guess they can call the original push a “promotional exclusive” or something to avoid another backlash.
Anyone tasteless enough to actually want this new U2 album deserves to get charged, imho.
Edited 2014-09-15 19:32 UTC
You don’t have to own an iPhone. Just having a iTunes account is enough to receive the U2 album.
I haven’t logged into iTunes in years; I don’t know if my account is even active anymore. I use gtkpod to manage my iPod.
Peter Cohen, writing for iMore:
And yet, Tony, had Google pushed some crap to all Android devices at once, you’d be all over it with pages-long posts about privavy, you-are-the-product, and god knows what else.
Just admit that pushing stuff to every iOS user’s *personal* devices without any user intervention or approval or any form of permission, which cannot be deleted, is scummy behaviour.
Edited 2014-09-15 22:39 UTC
You mean like an OS update perhaps? What a horrible idea.
This issue isn’t about U2, music of any kind or any kind of OS updates.
The core issue here is about property rights, and not having a company(any company!), continuing to hold all of the keys that enable them to summarily exert their will over devices they do not own. It’s just that in this specific case it’s related to a forced music download.
This is akin to a house builder that makes and retains copies of all door keys and administrative alarm codes (just in case–for the children’s safety–of course), who, without the owners knowledge or explicit consent, then lets him or herself in to that owners home while they’re gone to deliver a gift of a potted plant as a house warming gift (potted plant gifts are common in the US real estate market).
What’s the complaint about such a sweet, wonderful gift? If you don’t want it, just throw it in the trash, right?
Wrong! What is he/she doing entering the owner’s home for any reason without permission?, and why the f–k is he/she retaining all the keys and alarm override codes once they sold the house on? Not to mention the further issue of tapping in to their surveillance systems and tracking the owner’s every move.
This is the fundamental complaint many have of Apple and it’s control freakery. Now, Google and Microsoft too for that matter! It just seams beyond any of these companies to just leave people the hell alone to use their devices (property) as they will.
That so many “Church-o-Apple” iAsSouls have reduced this issue down to simply a bunch of unappreciative, whining, spoiled brats that don’t like U2, is just utterly amazing in its cluelessness.
Apple’s reputation cleaning crew’s job for today?
Swash > Rinse > Repeat, Ad Nauseam……
Edited 2014-09-16 13:47 UTC
Bravo for distinguishing “gift” from “invasion of personal property” in such a clear way.
You are wrong on so many levels.
1. I have an iPhone. The album did not get pushed to my device. After I heard about it I searched for it and downloaded it. It was added to my account so I didn’t have to buy it, but it did not get pushed to my device.
2. It obviously can be deleted. This new tool is nothing but a convenience. You could always delete it.
3. If they had given everyone an advertisement for the iPhone 6 to everyone’s device I could see the outrage, but some free music? Wow, the fanatics are truly out in force. Let’s see what else you can invent to throw a fit about.
This is at worst a promotion that could have been handled better. But of course that kind of story doesn’t generate those ever-important page views.
Edited 2014-09-16 05:36 UTC
I think it’s just some technical limit of the iTunes store. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence
Actually…. it can push to your device. It showed up on my phone, presumably because I the Automatic Downloads preference enabled.new purchases turned on. Of course I expected that to add things I buy to my phone and not songs Apple decided I should have.
Also, I noticed that it does not show up in the purchase history in iTunes. This is unfortunate, because if it did, you could set the purchase to hidden at the song level to keep it from showing up in iCloud unless you wanted it to. I have used this to hide duplicates of TV shows that have occurred when an episode you already have was sold in a bundle with episodes you did not have, and I used it to hide behind the scenes extras you only care to see once. For some reason, Apple did no provide the usual controls on the U2 songs, so it would always show up if you are using iCloud streaming to your phone. It would have made more sense to log it as a $0 purchase so that that functionality was not broken.
As far as the U2 album goes…. have not listened to it yet. The snippets of songs I heard on the news covering this debacle did not sound to promising. They lost me decades ago at Zooropa.
Music is a personal thing and people can react as viscerally to it as they would if somebody pushed a new religion on them. Apple would have done much better giving everyone an iTunes card to download something they like rather that picking it for us.
From the summary it seemed simply as if many people didn’t know how to do it… which tells you other interesting things about Apple users, I guess ;P
Yeah. But its pretty terrible. This is the day, I’ll tell my grand children when U2 and Apple lost their cool.
Well, Apple can regain their cool as they’ve done that before. And I guess grandkids will just never bother with terrible U2 albums like this and POP.
Nah, just see it for what it is: the perfect match of pretentious assholes.
POP is VERY good, and very different to previous U2 records. Change is good. Most groups break when after a few records it is evident that they can really only redo the same songs, over and over.
Obviously musical taste varies with person to person, but really? You like Pop?
I swear, there is no accounting for taste with die hard fans of U2 or DMB.
If all of a sudden you were given every single Justin Bieber – album on your account with no forewarning or anything and all those albums and songs therefore appeared in your music library, with no way of deleting them from there, you wouldn’t be upset and you’d just accept it, proceeding to listen to Bieber? You wouldn’t utter a single complaint?
HOW DID YOU KNOW I AM A JUSTIN BEIBER FAN. I TOLD NO ONE! NO ONE!
Seriously. The whole U2 promo thing seemed a little middle aged and tired to me. I was never a U2 fan and it’s pretty obvious that like most musicians their muse left them when their youth did. The only U2 album I really liked was Achtung Baby, the tracks were great and the fact I was hoofing it around the newly unified and hence very exciting city of Berlin at the time of it’s release just added relish. But the amount of anger about this is weird.
I think people just love to hate U2.
I am passionate about music. But it doesn’t mean that I like all genres of music available produced by some random bands all over the world. This is why we have genres in the first place.
For example, most Christians will not listen to secular music, but only to those produced by Christian groups/bands. This is their basic right, right?
So the complain is valid at a basic setting.
I take it you’ve never met any normal Christians? Only strict fundamentalist ones?
That’s the only way your statement make any sense.
I grew up in the Assemblies of God and other fringe pentecostal churches. I got better and left, decades ago, at significant social cost. I wouldn’t say that those fundamentalists are an odd fluke, though. They’re prevalent across the American South and pandering to them is responsible for the craziest antics of the Republican party, which unfortunately affects the rest of the world too. Just look at what George Bush thought god told him to do. Just look at how Sarah Palin.
That said… as a teenager I was sneaking U2’s albums War, Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, and Bad past the parents on tapes labelled “Amy Grant” because U2 was definitely not christian enough for them.
Now I think we need an open source U2 removal tool for the rest of our gadgets.
(presumably) pirate mixtapes were fine for them?
I know very, very many Christians, progressive, conservative or passive, and not a single one that listens to Christian bands. In Spain, which is (very arguably) one of the most catholic countries in the world, there is just no concept of Christian Rock or Pop or Bands or the like. I guess that is some American-only Jesus-and-Guns ultraconservative phenomenon, which must leave out way over 90% of Christianity.
I’m really curious, what is your background?
No, the gun-loving, ultra conservatives that you speak about are not really as hardcore about their religion as you might think. They are more political than religious. They might go to church on Sunday, but mostly forget about their religion the rest of the week, unless they’re bashing homosexuals or proclaiming on Facebook that we need to ‘get God back in schools.’ And besides, they mostly listen to country music anyway. (Source: I was born and raised in the deep south, and grew up around these people.)
On the other hand, evangelicals in the US who are REALLY hardcore (you know, the quiet ones you don’t hear about on the news) don’t listen to secular music all that much, if at all. Those are the ones you might find listening to Christian rock and the like, although most stick with traditional gospel music and such.
I do agree that its not universal that Christians only listen to Christian music. However, I have met those that do. They’re the same kind that attend a evangelical college near me that finally lifted their ban on students dancing off campus a few years ago. Seriously, any student reported to be caught dancing in any form ( chicken dance, macarana, square dancing, ball room, lindy hop) at any occasion ( baseball game, wedding, etc) even off campus would be disciplined.
So I guess they needed to listen to music that would preclude them from being tempted to dance.
But again, overall they are a really small minority within Christianity.
On the other hand, if it does affect such things as Billboard rank then it’s clearly a rather dishonest attempt to artificially boost album sales and remain relevant.
Perfectly U2, then.
Why would U2 do this? If you give it to everybody it loses all value in the eyes of the consumer.
Because like Microsoft, U2 have no taste.
Each album “sold” this way is counted towards the Bilboard album sales totals, which means it’s a top selling album, which in turn can cause more actual sales.
U2 isn’t the first to game album sales figures in this way, and they won’t be the last.
They’ve been eclipsed by Coldplay as the world’s most pretentious rock/alternative band. They probably need all the press they can get.
A million times this.
What value could it possibly lose?
I think most of the complaints were not to do with the invasive way Apple distributed of the free U2 album, but the fact the album was simply shit.
Edited 2014-09-15 19:31 UTC
You can’t GIVE people something for FREE without them complaining? Are you people kidding?
Just delete it if you don’t want it! I have bought a LOT of MP3 players in my time, and almost every one came preloaded with music, much of which I didn’t care for, so I deleted it!
Gorsh, I sure hope none of today’s whiny jerks buys a box of CrackerJack because they’d end up choking on the free prize, then complain and sue because the chemical content of the prize isn’t to be found IN THE INGREDIENTS LIST!
How many grams of saturated fat ARE THERE in this Glow In the Dark 3D Eyeball Sticker, anyway? Does it contain Peanut Gluten?!?
FOR PUCK’S SAKE, PEOPLE, if you don’t want Apple downloading things to your device without your permission, GO INTO SETTINGS, AND TURN THAT OPTION OFF. It’s not that hard.
That all said, was this a bit cheesy, claiming it was the largest album launch in history by doing the digital, electronic equivalent of sticking CD’s under people’s windshield wipers, or in their mailboxes?
YES!
Did users agree this sort of thing was okay under iTunes’ user agreement?
YES!
Has anyone even read the user agreement?
No.
Does the latest iTunes user agreement authorize the CEO of Apple to use military force globally to combat terrorism? It just might, YOU wouldn’t know, because most likely, you didn’t read it! But I digress.
As for people who say the album sucks, and anyone who wants it has no taste, PUCK EWE. Taste is subjective. What some people like, others will not. What you like NOW you may well not like in the future. Odds are, most of you once listened to songs from Sesame Street, or listened to Barney, or enjoyed the theme to the Power Rangers, and probably would go insane if you had to listen to that now. The music you like now you may not enjoy in 20 years.
So please, kindly don’t judge others by music you most likely didn’t even listen to. Most of the people commenting on the album did so without listening to it, obviously.
On a personal note, I HAVE listened to it, repeatedly, (my favorite off the album is probably Raised By Wolves,) and sure, it is unlike their recent stuff, but Jeebus… please listen to it as if you’re thinking about paying $9.99 for it, before tearing it, (and those people who liked it,) to shreds.
I have two U2 albums now, and I’m GLAD I got Songs of Innocence, and won’t be deleting it, and I thank Apple for NOT charging me money for this. If they had, (given it to everyone AND charged money, indeed,) I’d be mad as all hell. It’s the principle, you see.
The complainers are angry because they were given something they may or may not have wanted, FOR FREE. Bad move Apple, assuming everyone would want something you offered.
Nevertheless, the amount of whining is ridiculous.
These same people complaining are the sort of people who drink bottled “soda’s” which have “natural flavors” in the ingredients list, and don’t mind not being told WHAT those are, and drink the beverages anyway.
A certain coffee company famously was putting bits of crushed up BUGS in their “coffee” as a colorant, and yet people still drink the burnt, bitter-tasting sludge they serve… yet people are mad about a FREE album?
“No! Don’t give me something free, that I can delete if I don’t want it! Noooo!”
Sorry for waxing sarcastic. Some people, it seems, just have a gratitude problem.
Edited 2014-09-15 20:11 UTC
I think it’s great. As an owner of zero U2 albums, I have often thought it would be nice to own fewer U2 albums. Thanks to Apple, I’m now at minus 1.
That was the whole issue, and is the subject of the removal tool, mr. Smartypants: it could not be deleted.
One, you might want to get your facts straight before ranting like this. Two, you might want to note the lightheartedness with which this whole issue has been approached by most. We’re having some fun. Deal with it.
There are worse things than getting a U2 album you didn’t ask for, but it’s a bad precedent. In the PC industry, this type of generosity is called bloatware. The idea that the manufacturer of your device might download more bloatware for you at any time is disagreeable to most, I should think.
I actually enjoyed that Apple did not tend to push bloatware. I think they were just starting to do it at their low point in the early 90’s and then were refreshingly one of the very few big computer makers who were bloat free upon the return of Steve Jobs.
The thing to note is that the devices weren’t shipped with the album.
How would you feel if you went outside to find out that your local car dealership had taken it upon themselves to add black flame decals to your car without asking you? Its free, whats the problem? EVERYONE likes black flames, right? right?
Your analogy would fit better if they were changing something physical about the phones/iPods, rather than changing the content of the devices.
I would liken it more to the dealer changing the radio presets to what he thinks you’ll like best, then locking the radio down so you can’t change it back without requesting permission. You can still manually tune the radio, and you can play CDs, but those darn polka stations you never would have listened to are stuck on the presets and there’s nothing you could have done to stop him, since ultimately he controls what is stored on the radio. Even if you factory reset your radio, those stations will insert themselves right back on there as soon as you turn it on again.
You don’t really “own” the radio (iPhone) at that point, do you?
although there was indeed a lot of whining in your post, you should not be so hard on yourself.
Edited 2014-09-15 22:20 UTC
Guess why they had to make a removal tool? Since you seem a bit challenged in the reading comprehension department I’ll give you, say, 5 tries to get it right.
you have been bono’d
Just like your old and trustworthy virus removal tool
Is this it? Have we finally got there?
Has rape gone digital?
would have been for Apple to release a redemption code that all users could have applied to their own iTunes accounts if they chose to. I can’t blame people for seeing this as a threat. That same power they used to give they can use to take any number of things from your device, account, or both. It’s both a gift and a threat rolled into one package, at least for those who value control over their own machines and data. Had they offered a free code to all rather than pushing it, no one would be complaining right now.
This is probably the most sensible post I’ve seen on here or any other forum regarding this issue.
And let’s not forget Apple isn’t the only company with this kind of power over “our” devices. Amazon could at any moment decide to insert or remove a book, song, or video to or from my Kindle. The fact that I can’t stop them, short of keeping it off the Internet 24/7, shows that I don’t truly own the device I paid good money for.
Yeah, and Amazon have already demonstrated that they will not hesitate to do just that. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon are all just as bad as each other. We often forget that when we focus too narrowly on one specific issue.
“Apple releases tool removal tool”
Someone at Apple obviously didn’t think this through. Whoever pushed this out forgot about the “Automatically download new purchases (including free) made on other devices” setting.
Woops.
as a (part) Irishman, who has fond memories of (old) U2 I feel I need to preface the next remark with – “Old” U2, from Boy to Joshua Tree for starters were great. Even Rattle and Hum and Actung Baby even had their moments..
But, the old epithet of “selling out”(to “the man”) – has been weirdly perverted by U2.. and it’s particular striking set against Bono’s various Save the World moments. Perhaps they see their various Apple flirtations, culminating in this very OTT and intrusive crass behaviour as pushing the envelope or ‘inclusive’ marketing.. but in reality it’s highly corporate, disingenuous and capitalist in the worst of ways. YouTwo can “own” our Free album.. (better not count for “Sales” or chart positioning though!!!)
I’ve a Mac with itunes and rarely use it cause it doesn’t play flac but the U2 song wasn’t there.
So now I had to click on download in the store to hear what the fuss is about.
It depends on your settings. Many people got it who were not expecting it, and it appears to not be able to be hidden from iClould Streaming because it was never logged as a purchase.
It’s not 1987 anymore. No one cares about U2.
U2 releases a new album, which tops the charts of “most deleted albums of all time”
I cannot download it at all, and Apple support sent me the usual pre-compiled solutions mail which of course doesn’t fix anything.
Anyway, Apple may have made a mistake pushing it to everybody, but at least they apologized. On the other side, I just purchased a Note 3 Neo and I spent hours trying to figure out how to disable or remove all the crapware that Samsung put on it, and it turns out that for most things you just can’t.
As far as I’m concerned that U2 album is unwanted spam that showed up in my iphone as icloud content. I don’t use icloud, haven’t plugged my phone into the pc+itunes in a while, and have no interest in anything I didn’t solicit just showing up like that.
Thank, but no thanks. And don’t do that shit again. It’s more offensive than those jesus-pushers who shove their propaganda under your door when you don’t bother answering.