As part of the roll out of the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, Apple announced that it was adding U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ to every Apple iTunes library automatically as a ‘gift’.  There was an immediate uproar from Appleland that became so raucous that eventually Apple created a page to tell people how to remove the album from their accounts (yes, there’s an app for that), culminating in Bono himself apologizing for the entire fiasco.

The main complaint of the Apple community was that, a) they didn’t want Apple deciding what takes up space on their iTunes account and, b) they hate U2.  There was a lot of counterpoint from Apple / U2 loyalists that thought Apple had done a good thing.  ‘If some gives you a gift, you say thank you.’  The response from the aggrieved was ‘If someone gives me something I don’t want, it’s not a gift.’

To be sure, the bundle fest that was the iPhone 6 launch was intended to be a slick cross marketing event.  A ‘free’ gift, it was not.  U2 were well compensated for the release rights of the album.  In addition, everyone that isn’t an Apple customer will pay for it.  Apple gave it away for marketing purposes.  The question is why would Apple want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do this.

Continue reading “Songs of Innocence – The Real Reason Apple Users Should Be Upset | Peter Mehit” →