When millions of people realised they had a free download of the new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, in their iTunes library, it sparked worldwide outrage.
And after issuing an apology for the automatic Apple iTunes download, U2’s lead singer Bono told Absolute Radio's Christian O'Connell that all they wanted to do was let people sample their music.
“The idea was to put a bottle of milk on people’s front door, 500million of them" he said. "And it might have ended up on a few people’s cereal and some of them were lactose intolerant [laughs]. It’s really great to be in the conversation, and a lot of people were uninterested in U2 then just became mad at U2, and we would consider that an improvement in the relationship. People who never listen to rock music, let alone U2, it’s been brilliant. 25million people I think it is now have this album, we know they’ve downloaded the whole album and 85million of them have checked us out.”
He said the band put their whole life into these new songs, adding: “It took us a while for them to be up with our best work, a lot of critics seem to agree, and so we just didn’t want them to get lost in the noise. Maybe we became a little too noisy ourselves to get them through but we wanted to serve the songs.”
The band’s album received a lukewarm critical reception in some quarters, and was given away to an estimated 500million iTunes account holders as part of the promotional exercise that went along with the launch of the California tech giant’s latest phone. But it’s also available to buy.
The Edge added: “It’s really great for all the people who didn’t like getting a free download from Apple, now they can pay for it. It’s fantastic. Actually the truth is it’s a small number of people who got upset, and talking to a lot of people out there I got a lot of emails saying that people are really blown away by it. The spirit was very generous, and I think people have now responded to that and what’s nice is now the narrative has shifted over, as it always should have been, to the music itself.”