Despite the uproar about U2’s new album Songs of Innocence not so innocently landing in people’s iTunes without their permission, it seems the band’s frontman Bono has been on your iOS device all along.
If you go into the music player on your iPhone or iPod and study the ‘Artists’ logo along the bottom of the screen, you’ll notice the silhouette showing a singing man is actually that of Bono.
Yes, whether you liked it or not, for the past year or more Bono has been on your device, guarding your music library whether you wanted him or not.
Last week, Bono, during a Facebook interview, apologised to fans for giving them an entire album for free.
On 9 September, Apple and U2 collaborated to release the new album for free to more than 500m iTunes users around the world, with the option of downloading it for free up until 13 October.
The move prompted a bit of a backlash and disgruntled users said they weren’t happy with the Irish band’s album being part of their music collection without their prior consent.
Apple, within a week, provided a one-click removal button to make it easier for non-fans to remove the album from their iTunes library. However, once removed, the album would no longer be available for free if users had a change of heart.
“Oops, I’m sorry about that. Had this beautiful idea, we got carried away with ourselves.
“Artists are prone to that kind of thing. A drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion and a deep fear that these songs that we’ve poured our life into over the last few years mightn’t be heard.
“There’s a lot of noise out there and I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”
