Michal Ždanský It should have been great PR for Apple, U2 and iTunes. Apple offered all iTunes users ke free download the unreleased U2 album Songs of Innocence. Great news for fans of this band for sure, but not for everyone else for whom U2 isn't exactly their cup of tea.
Apple invested over 100 million dollars in the campaign promoting Songs of Innocence, part of which went directly to U2's pocket, compensating them for the lost profit from sales. After all, two million people downloaded the album in just the first few days. But how many of them got an album on their phone without asking for it? Apple made one major mistake – instead of making the album free to download, it automatically added it to each account as purchased.
Therein lies the stumbling block of the whole situation, aptly named U2gate. iOS devices can automatically download purchased content from iTunes if the user has this feature turned on. As a result, these users had a U2 album downloaded into their discography without question, regardless of their musical tastes, as if Apple assumed that everyone must like U2.
In fact, much of the younger generation doesn't even know U2. After all, there is a website dedicated to the tweets of angry users who have discovered an unknown band in their music playlist and are wondering who is u2. The band also apparently has a significant number of anti-fans. For them, the forced inclusion of Songs of Innocence must have felt like a strong provocation from Apple.
I have no iPhone, so I've just found Bono climbing through my window to sneak a vinyl copy of their LP onto my shelf. I hit him with a broom
— Robin Ince (@robinince) September 12, 2014
Another problem is that the album cannot be deleted in the obvious way. To do this, you need to connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to iTunes and uncheck the album in the list of music that should be synchronized with the device. Alternatively, delete the album directly in iOS one song at a time by swiping left on each track. However, if you have automatic downloads of purchased songs turned on, it may happen that the album is downloaded to your device again. This will give the impression that Apple does not want you to delete the album at all.
Apparently the situation was embarrassing enough for Apple that it added to its online support instruction, how to delete Songs of Innocence from your music library and from your list of purchased music to prevent U2 from re-downloading to your device. Apple even created special page, where Songs of Innocence can be completely deleted from iTunes and purchased tracks in one click (it can be re-downloaded for free later, but only until October 13th, after which the album will be charged). In Cupertino, the results of the campaign must be tearing their hair out.
Apple will definitely not take this PR escapade for granted. It almost seems like every iPhone launch is accompanied by some minor affair. It was "Antennagate" on the iPhone 4, "Sirigate" on the iPhone 4S, and "Mapsgate" on the iPhone 5. At least for the 5s they avoided "Fingergate" in Cupertino, Apple ID works reliably for most people luckily.
I see no reason why it should be a problem for me. Even if it was an album by Eva and Vašek, I simply won't keep it on my device, it won't take up space, I won't listen to it and I won't make a science out of it.
I guess..
Although I'm not a U2 fan, I certainly wouldn't make a fuss about getting their last one into "Purchased". If you want some "**gate", wait until Friday, when the first skunks unwrap their sixes. There will be a "backlight bleed gate" soon :-)
I have U2 RAD and I have almost all the DVDs and CDs from Inch and this certainly made me happy and when the physical medium comes out, I will definitely buy it.
The problem, I think, is that (even if it's a feature and if it works for downloading what it has, no one is solving it, e.g. that of Eva and Vasko), that users who (like/don't like) U2 suddenly iZariadeni showed content they didn't want. I guess you have to look at it with a different mentality than our European one, where the manufacturer does whatever he wants with my device (I know why it happened, how it got there and it's clear to me).
But that's not really new. This is how apple sometimes adds other interpreters to purchases. In general, it's not a happy solution, I agree, but it's definitely not new. It's just crazy Americans used to Miley Cyrus blabber :)
I'm not even claiming anything else. If Miley Cyrus' bare ass landed there, no one would have a problem with the team. Art is art. :)
"It almost seems like every iPhone launch is accompanied by an affair" An affair? Some strong words. Yes, it wasn't a completely happy solution, but I don't consider it an affair. Some people don't like U2, some don't like Lady Gaga. And negative advertising, also advertising
so someone will appreciate it, why not, I don't mind
Crap. Sales of U2's other albums have grown significantly, making money for both U2 and Apple. Just find out a little more information…
No one denies that, but the whole thing could have been done without these inconveniences. The fact that Apple provided instructions on how to get rid of the album speaks for itself.
I hesitated until now, I don't need U2, but this pointlessly heated anti-article kicked me into action - I'm going to download and turn off this website from rss feeds. Bye Bye.
I agree, this is a scary article. It's like a couple of well-heeled geese say they don't want a free U2 album. What are you guys doing? Help..
So by this measure, is the crapware that laptop manufacturers put in their devices also okay? It's free after all, how can anyone scream that they don't want it? I'm not saying it's crapware on par with a U2 record, but in both cases a company is stuffing people with something that most of them don't want. It's nothing but spam to them.
Would you speak differently if Apple stuffed Helena Vondráčková or Nickelback into your phone? And believe me, for those people who spoke up, U2 are a similar equivalent.
The old songs are quite good and they are already quite classics, but this album is really boring, always a bit of whining. For a moment I thought I was listening to coldplay.
what the hell is this?! apple has been doing this for a long time and users should have expected it. I have automatic downloads turned off for that reason. Apple has given away some music in this way several times. I personally remember that I couldn't even get rid of some VIDEO CLIPS of some run-of-the-mill pop crap. and it definitely took up more than the U2 audio album. The CD of the u2 album costs hundreds of crowns in our country, so the release of a new one for free was such an event that even a non-fan should have noticed and thought that if he didn't want it, he should turn it off!
What is this article? Don't be mad at me, but that's a real flight :-)
They should have released it only for the EU region :) Now, my friends, you want it too :) Somehow classical music still exists in the EU. otherwise black music and foreign pwrformers, who can't actually sing or play, rule the roost.
And the fact that Apple was forced to release a tool to remove the U2 album from iTunes as if it were some kind of malware, isn't it a rip-off?
Totally agree.
Making little things into huge "Watergate" messes is really embarrassing. Journalistic ducking and exaggeration of stupidity that probably bothers the absolute minimum of people.
If Apple didn't sell iOS devices with such an embarrassingly small capacity, it wouldn't even be a problem. But on 8GB and often even on 16GB devices, those 100MB pairs can be a problem.
Apple sells devices with different capacities. The fact that you bought the cheapest one with the smallest capacity is not Apple's problem, but yours. And it's also worth cleaning out your iOS coop from time to time.
But hey :-)
I have an iPhone 5S with 32GB and an iPad 2 with 64GB :-)
I don't have a problem with that, and I even like U2, and I've bought some of their albums, but I've read quite a lot of hateful comments about Apple and U2 because of that.
In advance, it must be objectively admitted that the capacities of the basic models are really small for the price of the memory :-)
Okay, I probably rushed a bit :-) But we can probably agree on the need for cleaning in iOS devices. Deleting e.g. incoming and outgoing emails or recorded videos/photos after moving them to Mac or deleting songs that I have already played should be a matter of course to preserve the sanity of the iOS device.
So I clean all the time. When I see that I am not using the application, I delete it. I store my photos in dropbox, I have spotify for almost all my music, and the music and videos that I want to have everywhere are no more than 5GB.
This is another affair. It was easy to delete from the iOS device, and to no longer appear among the available songs in the cloud, it was enough to remove it from purchased.
A bit smaller ot, but what was "Sirigate" ?
This was not as much talked about as other "...gates", but it was about the unusability and inaccuracy of Siri. It is credited to Forstall as one of his great failures alongside Apple maps.
I'll admit that when the guys from U2 announced it at the keynote, I didn't look in the "Purchased" section, but I was looking for the album among other U2 albums. I expected it to appear there classically with a price of €0,00.
But making an affair out of the fact that someone got something for free is perhaps worse than turning a mosquito into a camel...
Here you can clearly see the limitations of the "ordinary" user of Apple products.
You can delete it in 3 clicks, if you have a Mac, even 2.
1) Yes, Apple shouldn't have put it on Purchased for everyone, but put it on the Store for $0.00. (I personally expected it that way and I also looked for it there)
2) Yes, from the beginning it feels like a violent push of something that most of the more than 500 million people don't want.
On the other hand, if I take into account the situation where most people do not know how to delete, then it is a relatively prudent move on the part of Apple. It's just assigned to purchased albums and no one has to look for anything. It is immediately visible.
The question is whether this "scandal" is based purely on the inability of users to delete the album, or just on the popular need to "hate" anything slightly off-axis. Or a combination of both…
"I didn't even know you could hide purchases from your history until this, and I'm supposed to be an expert in Apple stuff."
Marco Arment
http://www.marco.org/2014/09/16/this-u2-album-really-does-suck
AND? I don't consider myself an expert, as Master Arment writes, and I know it... If I work with an OS, I consider it necessary to learn better than just knowing where the web browser icon is and where to restart it...
But to each his own, that..
Considering who Marco Arment is… I think he has a bit longer penis than you.
In addition, this is actually an invisible feature, nothing that even a power user would use.
So who is it? Do you know his penis?
http://www.marco.org/about
Tumblr, Instapaper, The Magazine, Accidental Tech Podcast…
There is no point in commenting on such comments. ;)
I think about myself and move on.
I would say that the title of the whole article is a bit exaggerated. The fact that something is not to someone's taste can happen, and Apple simply fixed it to the customer's satisfaction. I don't know why to call it a fiasco right away.
Why didn't they put 100 million into the development of a flashlight with a battery life of two days... I know that the price is a necessary part of the sale, but there is no logic... it is clear from this article that the majority of users would rather have a battery life than a free u2...
"The aptly named U2gate"? Are you serious. What idiot came up with naming these pseudo-affairs with the suffix -gate? The obvious attempt to make a comparison with the Watergate case is quite out of place - 1) Watergate was the name of the hotel, so it was not a water case. So the -gate suffix is nonsense 2) Watergate changed the course of life in America and thus the whole world. It led to the first resignation of an American president in history.
U2gate is just a manifestation of the absolute crunch of users who received a gift and instead of saying thank you now shout that they didn't want it. Well, I've gotten used to the fact that it's normal to act like a five-year-old on the internet.