September 15, 2014: Responding to its disastrous U2 album giveaway, Apple supplies iPhone homeowners with a software 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 joyful 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 pals 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 help to Bono’s Product (Purple) charity, devoted to wiping out HIV and AIDS.
Nevertheless, 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 gadgets. The destructive 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 count on the type 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, nonetheless, Apple relented. It revealed an online web page with particulars revealing how customers may 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 the same giveaway. Even when it does provide free trials of merchandise, it doesn’t assume customers will need to participate.