In a recent Facebook Q&A called #U2NoFilter the singer half-heartedly answers the question from a user: “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people's playlists ever again? It's really rude.“ The resulting answer is so Bono.
Ah hell, here we go, more Bono news. We’ll give him this much, he does know how to stay relevant in the media, even if it is because over 470 million people hate him even more now than before.
In a recent Facebook Q&A called #U2NoFilter the singer half-heartedly answers the question from a user: “Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people's playlists ever again? It's really rude.“
We assure you, it wasn’t us that asked the question, but the user is certainly a kind, fulfilled soul after our own hearts. It was a query that pushed Bono and his wagon-drawn ego to collaborate with one another enough to muster up this for a paltry response:
Oops. I'm sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea and we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing: (a) drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard. There's a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.
Apple mysteriously uploaded the album “Songs Of Innocence” to its 500 million users in a brilliant, well thought out marketing scheme this past September. Shortly thereafter Apple’s senior VP of Internet software and services told Billboard that 26 million people (only 5% of users) downloaded the album and 81 million had “experienced” it one way or another.
“Experienced it,” as in, riding the bus home after a long days work with your personally built library on shuffle only to have solace interrupted by something so profoundly space-invading the hairs on your neck actually jumped off and hid deep into the threads of the seat? That kind of experience?
Regardless of how users feel about it now, there was enough backlash for Apple to quickly create a dedicated area for people to wash their cloud clean of the debacle, a previously impossible task for users who’ve bought albums in the past.
If you ask us, we think it’s time to say, “Bono voyage” to any ideas like this in the future from Apple or anything else.
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