Apple Music listeners are still enraged at a free album given to them at the time of its release, which they were unable to remove from their phones.
A lucrative deal to get the album onto every device registered at the time backfired for Apple as they spent $100million for exclusive rights.
Despite the outrage from members of the public who had no interest in the album, the release broke records for Apple and their iTunes service.
Apple’s Tim Cook confirmed the album would be available to 500million account holders, making the release of U2’s record the “largest album release of all time”.
While it may have been an album sent out to the most people worldwide, it was not nearly as listened to as the tech titans had hoped for.
Of the 500million who received the album for free, just 33million listened, meaning a measly 6.7% endured U2’s Songs of Innocence back in 2014.
Listeners are still furious at the inclusion of the album on their phones. Backlash was so strong at the time of release that Apple had to implement a delete button, which had been lacking for the first week of the album’s release.
Those who received the album for free are remembering the debacle well a decade on, with one user on Reddit’s r/TodayILearned likening it to Apple “supergluing a CD to their floor” when they realised they could not delete the album.
Another added: “I thought I’d deleted it on all my devices. Then I got AirPods and damned if pairing them didn’t trigger that song from the bowels of my tablet. I hated that band in the ‘90s and I despise them now. The last thing I need is that caterwauling in my ear.”
A third recalled their devices automatically redownloading U2’s 2014 album, even after they had deleted it from their device.
They wrote: “I wouldn’t know it redownloaded until a song would start to play on random. Immediate anger. Even more annoying we were still on dial up at that point and using up all the bandwidth to download each time.”
Others were left wondering if the album rollout could have been better for listeners at the time. One user suggested: “Ironically if they’d simply put out a push notification offering them the album for free, a lot more people would’ve listened to it as they’d have psychologically felt like they were involved in the process and happy they were getting something for free.”
Some remain horrified by the results of U2’s album deal with Apple, with one listener left with U2 making up more than half of their library.
They wrote: “I remember this happening at the time. I was a kid and I only had 5 or 10 songs on my iTunes, and suddenly half of it was f***ing U2. it was annoying as f***. they didn’t decide to let people remove it because no one listened to it.
“6.7% of users in a week is pretty f***ing high considering a lot probably weren’t even using iTunes, and it was within a week. They let people remove it because they were p***ed that a random unsolicited album was appearing on shuffle and there was nothing you could do about it.”
