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Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2's Album On Their Devices
Zanadou writes "Apple may have succeeded at breaking two records at once with the free release of U2's latest album, titled Songs of Innocence, via iTunes. But now, it looks like it's also on track to become one of the worst music publicity stunts of all time. Users who have opted to download new purchases to their iPhones automatically have found the new U2 album sitting on their phones. But even if iTunes users hadn't chosen automatic downloads, Songs of Innocence will still be displayed as an "iTunes in the Cloud" purchase. That means it will still be shown as part of your music library, even if you delete all the tracks. The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your "iTunes in the Cloud" purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list. Other reactions include rapper Tyler, The Creator saying that having the new U2 album automatically downloaded on his iPhone was like waking up with an STD. Update: 09/16 15:06 GMT by T : Note: Apple has released a fix.
If this album is 100 Mbytes at AT&T's roaming price of $19.95 per megabyte, this is going to cost me $1,995. The album is on my phone so I hope it downloaded over a week ago! If not, I'm screwed because this is a work phone. They were fine with me checking email a few times the last time I traveled, but that was only $45 in overage fees. This is going to be very profitable for AT&T and other providers.
U2 didn't pay a dime, Apple paid them.
So anyone with a problem not as bad as someone starving in a 3rd world country has no right to complain or discuss it, ever?
Logic is sorely lacking around here. It's called context. If you want to discuss 3rd world problems, there are plenty of forums to do that in. This is a technology site. You are obviously in the wrong place. Take your social justice somewhere else.
You run macs with almost no free disk space and set iTunes to download stuff automatically - and that's someone else's fault when they run out of disk space?
Sell the cards (they'll typically only get you a few cents, but it adds up and it gets them out of your account), trade the coupons with your friends for coupons that actually interest you (a friend had a 90% off coupon for a game this weekend that semi-interested me). The coupon gave me a game for 70 cents, and my card sales paid for that.
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Hasnt happened to me, but yes i would bitch about that too. Dont put stuff in MY library that i didnt ask for. This is a MAJOR Information Age problem that needs to be stopped now. Offer it to me for free, just dont insert it into my library without my permission.
Good-bye
It's not about the product, it's about the account. People with "download new purchases automatically" switched on aren't forced into it by Apple, it's a user preference. The problem here is that Apple marked the album as purchased for their iTunes account, and that kicked off the normal download that happens when the user deliberately buys music.
It's a side-effect of how the system is supposed to work according to the user's preferences. It just fucked up badly because it wasn't designed with this use-case in mind.
And yet, isn't it hilarious to think that if they simply used the auto-download to push free music as a feature from the start of iTunes, people would actually be bitching right now if it suddenly broke and they didn't get their free copy of U2's album.
Just goes to show you no one is ever happy.
This strikes me as simply the next logical step in marketing. U2 is a major group, and it's hard to argue that giving customers their new album as a bonus is a bad thing. But the next step will be "free" albums Apple wants you to listen to, and the one after that will be extorting artists to pay them to have their albums released this way.
The final step, no doubt, will be an extra fee to have automatic installation of such stuff disabled.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Amazon has done worse - deleting books.
Kindles are as much of a prison as iWhatevers.
You're incompetent or lying.
To download the album your Mac Minis would have to a) have iTunes running, and b) have end-users tell iTunes to download the songs. Unlike an iPhone, there is no auto-download setting on a Mac. Hell, I can't even get the "check for Available Downloads" menu option to download new episodes for my season passes to TV shows, I have to load the iTunes store, go to "purchased," and then manually select the TV season/album/whatever I want to download.
More importantly everybody knows Mac OS X needs multiple gigabytes free as memory swap space on it's startup disk. The general recommendation is 15% of the drive. Which means even if you're using the very first, circa 2005, PPC version, of the Mac Mini you should have 6 GB free. The entire U2 album is only 109 MB.
You poor baby, you'll have to scroll past an album you don't like. You no longer can tell your little music-obssessed-U2-hating-because-only-peons-like-U2 friends you have no U2 songs. You have to go into a long story about how Evil Apple put music-other-people-like-on-your-computer.
Let's be honest here. If you're this worked up about downloading a single album you don't like, then you're probably actually enjoying being this worked up about downloading an album you don't like. You and your little hobbyist buddies will get more pleasure from complaining about the Evil Apple/U2 conspiracy then you possibly could from anything as trivial as an actual album.
The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your "iTunes in the Cloud" purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list.
Incorrect. In iTunes there's a prominent "X" displayed on the upper right corner of the album. Click it. The album is gone.