September 15, 2014: Responding to its disastrous U2 album giveaway, Apple gives iPhone house owners 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, hundreds of thousands discover themselves with an album they didn’t order of their iTunes library. Many weren’t pleased about it.
Apple’s U2 album giveaway backfires
Apple and U2 shared a particular connection for years, with the band’s frontman, Bono, turning into good buddies 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 industrial helped make the music a success.) Apple additionally lent its assist 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 routinely pushing it to gadgets. The detrimental fallout proved intense.
U2 album giveaway: A contact of megalomania
Bono later blamed the cock-up on getting carried away. He additionally stated it was primarily based on “megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years might not be heard.”
Apple appeared baffled by the backlash. From its perspective, it merely gave away a free album. The corporate actually didn’t anticipate the form of response it obtained. The truth is, Cupertino was so assured that it paid U2 and its report label a reported $100 million for the rights to Songs of Innocence.
On September 15, nevertheless, Apple relented. It printed an online web page with particulars revealing how customers may wipe the brand new U2 album from their accounts. (Sadly, the web page is now not lively.)
As with all web outrages, U2-gate blew over earlier than lengthy. However Apple by no means repeated an identical giveaway. Even when it does supply free trials of merchandise, it doesn’t assume customers will wish to participate.