U Talkin’ U2’s iTunes Mess 2 Me?

Every so often, Bono forgets he’s in one of the greatest ever rock bands and still chooses to apologize for something U2 has done. A recurring mea culpa? That time the band decided to inflict every iTunes user with a free download of their 2014 album Songs of Innocence, a vision that cost Apple at least $100 million and forced it to publicize a removal tool to delete the album from users’ libraries. “I went too far on that one,” Bono now concedes to the New York Times. The Edge added, “We take risks. We have to. So you fail, you fall on your face at times. That’s part of the gig.” Bono previously wrote in his 2022 memoir that he feared critics might see the free album as an “overreach” and didn’t realize an unexpected consequence was amplifying “access of big tech to our lives.” He tells the Times that even U2’s manager at the time dissuaded them from doing it. “He said pretty much the same thing that Tim Cook said when I pitched him the idea, which is: ‘You spent your whole life getting people to pay for music. Why would you want to give something away for free?’” Bono recalled. “We were experimenting. We wanted to see if we could get Apple or another company to pay for our music and then they distribute it. And look, it’s going to take some experimentation to fix the music business. It’s astonishing how little other musicians are paid and it’s frightening. But yeah, that was all on me.” The band’s new album, Carnaval de Luz, will be released next month. You have free will to purchase it … at least we think so.