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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.

3 of 610 comments (clear)

  1. I've been on data roaming since last Monday... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:Simple by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All those fucking cards and coupons in my inventory and no option to just delete them

    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.

  3. Re:First world problems. by NicBenjamin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.