Looks like lots of people have downloaded U2’s Songs of Innocence—26 million in total—according to Apple. Whether how many of those were automatic or not, that is another story.
Here’s what Billboard reports:
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior VP of internet software and services, tells Billboard that U2’s Songs of Innocence has racked up a staggering 26 million complete downloads since its Sept. 9 release as a free download exclusively to Apple’s 500 million global iTunes customers. In total, Cue adds, over 81 million Apple customers experienced songs from Innocence, a global figure that includes plays and streams through iTunes, iTunes Radio and Beats Music. “To help put this into perspective,” he says, “prior to this, 14 million customers had purchased music from U2 since the opening of the iTunes Store in 2003.”
Despite the freebie, Apple released a one-click tool to enable customers to remove the album, after it downloaded automatically via iCloud for some customers, who got angry about the move.
Did you keep or delete this free U2 album?
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Yeah via “forced download” lol hence why i turned off auto downloads lol
U2 sucks, and Bono is king wanker. Smh.
LOL, and so many people are upset about it. No good deed goes unpunished.
I good deed would have been giving people the ability to access/download the album for free if they choose. Making it appear of people’s personal devices without notification, consent, or a simple and clear way to remove it is one of the most boneheaded things Apple has ever done in my opinion. It just felt too invasive and presumptuous to a lot of people. How could Apple expect people to be happy about a reminder that they can manipulate the content on their costumer’s devices at will? Yeah, I know, that’s not exactly what they did, but to the average consumer that’s what it seemed like.
They’re bragging about the number of downloads of something they forced on to people’s devices??
I first hid it from my cloud… then deleted when they finally gave us a way to remove it….
While it was nice of them to “offer” their users a “free” U2 album, they could have done it much differently that wouldn’t have caused such an uproar. Say maybe a link sent in email?
I never have been a U2 fan and never will.
I actually had a couple family members think they wasted accidentally spend money on that crap.
Stats on this album don’t count… EVER. The most “non-successful” album ever (unlike”unsuccessful”, this album can never be judged a success as there is no legitimate gage).