Classic or Dud: U2

Didn't realise Morten Harket was into U2 then. Subtle A-ha influence?

from the Torygraph

The Irish band’s 19-album back catalogue sold 6,744 copies in the last week ...based on data from then Official Charts Company. That compares with 697 sales the previous week. Almost all of the extra sales were digital downloads, with fewer than 60 U2 albums sold on the high street.

well there is the beautiful day / sun always shines on tv thing so... xp

nobody that likes their own music would behave in such a way

I know that the internet is filled within whining whiners who like to whine but all the complaining about a free album irritated me to no end. (I guess I am whining about this... Whatever.)

I got the album on my computer, listened once and (apparently unlike everyone else) had zero problem making it go away once I realized it was boring and I'd never listen to it again.

Yeah it's kind of incredible. I don't like it but I dunno I'll probably keep it just for shits & giggles

Not feeling the album so much, it's probs my least fave of theirs from what I can tell (disappointing bc NLOTH was really good and has some epic U2 jams) but it's an amazing troll effort.

hey look, free albumdog shit i threw into your front window! i think it's a useful case of tech company overreach because the intrusion is more personal. if you don't think tech is monitoring and selling everything it can around "you" to the highest bidder or you're ok with it because oh em gee it's so cool there's nothing to say really. it isn't about the thickness of u2 "the band" that makes "rock music" it's about the truthiness of this band being applied to current "benevolent" consumer ideology which relies on the maxim that you can't be ungrateful for or criticize something if it's free.

Very well put. That is one major aspect why I think it is odd some people find all the upheaval odd.

But the second one is the tech side - or rather, ethical side - of it: Apple showed a complete disrespect to its users personal digital space. Just days after the news broke that dozens of accounts had been compromised and had their private photos stolen, here comes Apple flipping you the finger, saying: "You know what? We can do it the other way around too! We'll put something in your personal cloud, something you didn't ask for, without your consent, and something you can't get rid of! And we'll break it to all our users as if they won the fucking lottery, haha!"

If you don't understand why people take issue with that, then I don't know what to tell you.

I know that the internet is filled within whining whiners who like to whine but all the complaining about a free album irritated me to no end. (I guess I am whining about this... Whatever.)

It's not a 'free album'. It's an album that is rammed down your throat. A real free album would be: go to apple.com/U2 and click download, and presto, you have a free album! It can only be a free album if you have the choice to grab it or not.
I don't care if people see this as anal or nitpicking. I didn't ask for a fucking U2 album being buried in my iCloud, taking up space, unable (at the time) to get rid of.

I get shit sent to me or pushed from Apple and a dozen other companies all the time. Apps on my machines, icons that pop up, things that disappear, new OS that supplants the old OS but does a worse job, etc. There are a dozen things I have no control over that Apple (and google and facebook and others) are changing or pushing or adding or taking away all the time. I think of the new U2 album no differently than I think of Apple maps or whatever, just another shitty app I won't use. If Apple really fucked up it's in not forcing people to listen to it from start to finish the first time their new iPhones are booted up.

For a company struggling to uphold that iCloud is secure to use for your private things, opening it up themselves and shitting a new U2 album in it is the dumbest thing to do. It is not the same as apps who push you stuff about software updates or whatever.

But aren't google, facebook, apple et al. constantly invading your privacy? Or threatening to? Or doing so without you even knowing it? They all have equally onerous terms of service. They know where you are, they know what you look at on the web, they send you targeted ads, etc.

I do admit the timing was absolutely terrible, in terms of doing this right after the iCloud was breached (though not hacked, Apple is quick to note!). Would have been perfect if there were Bono nudes in there.

if facebook automatically friended everyone with bono, would you be okay with that?

Yeah, I think Josh in Chicago is otm here in general. But with that said, I feel like it's usually some seemingly random thing that triggers public outrage about long-running, deep-seated issues. So even if it's kind of a trivial tip-of-the-iceberg, I feel like that's usually how these things go.

Bono owns 2.3% of Facebook. We are definitely all his friends.

it's not really invasion of privacy imo it's reconstitution of it along useful lines, like it was always a fuzzy concept to begin with, maybe important because it helped capitalism to happen, now it needs to be marshalled in a new way that tech is still figuring out how to do palatably, people will go along with it in the name of efficiency relevance and new market economics but when it starts to fuck with their moral emotional aesthetic sense of themselves that's when it goes too far and they get creeped out by this sense of being diffuse and subject to the control of obscure forces as if they ever aren't.

…which is why I can totally see why Apple didn't see this as a dumb move. It's hard to predict the things people will get outraged about, especially when there's all manner of "data-sharing" going on, both at the corporate level but also users willingly sharing their info.

Doesn't seem that hard to me: U2 shows up in my phone shuffle, and I hate them, so fuck you Apple and U2. The fact Apple had to enact a fix just to let me get rid of the songs = album is worse than spam. The thought process that just because it was free means I have no right to complain about it, or even be grateful, is very typical of large corporations. They have an agenda, they push it, they deal with the consequences later (presumably after the money has been made). In this case, it looks like even Apple/U2 knows they screwed up.

they deal with the consequences later (presumably after the money has been made)

i.e. there are no consequences

i mean there's recalibration sure via the wrong people getting punished.

x-post

from their perspective, none that matter nearly as much -- theoretical consequences like customer satisfaction, reputational loss don't usually stand in the way of big initiatives

oh my god you guys, U2 are on my spotify!

NO ESCAPE

they on my rdio, too!

they missed a trick IMO by not forcing this onto our devices & computers in Apple Lossless so that ppl who were making out their storage could be really fucked

U2 and Apple have beat us at our own game. In fact, their bravery has made us re-evaluate our position towards capitalism.

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<3_<3

How much to not get another U2 album?

applause xxp

I knew I bookmarked this thread for a reason

BanakaMouse

banaka my house

Let's be honest if it wasn't U2 and it wasn't shit even by their shitty standards, it wouldn't have pissed people off half as much.

Apple are proud to team up with Guns n' Roses

Dunno. If Vampire Weekend had done this, 95% of the world would have gone 'huh?', but those final five percent would have been FURIOUS.

I think it would have gone down badly (if not as widely publicized) for any band because you couldn't initially get rid of the files. I think it would have been fine for U2 had they just given users the option of downloading the thing, instead of attaching it to their libraries, borg-style. In a way, they're trailblazers in this, because they taught every other band what NOT to do.

loving everybody acting like extended family at christmas - "good lord, your nice cloud provider buys you a u2 album and all you can do is complain. you should be nicer to that conglomerate, or maybe next time they won't buy you anything."

why u hurt apple's feelings

They should've force fed the world a new Dr. Dre album. They already bought Dre anyway iirc.

I thought you could get rid of the files, but you just couldn't get rid of the 'purchased' label?

They should've force fed the world a new Dr. Dre album. They already bought Dre anyway iirc.

― ambient yacht god (Le Bateau Ivre

nah forget about Dre

Show some respect Alfred, he is - after all - still D.R.E.

re: “it isn’t a big deal—”

Apple isn’t Google or Facebook. 83-92% of Google’s revenue is advertising. Likewise, 88-94% of Facebook’s revenue is advertising. Less than 4% of Apple’s revenue is advertising. You can’t compare Apple with Google and Facebook when discussing privacy issues. They have completely different incentives.

I guess it is now back to Metallica's turn to do something so publicly obnoxious that people find even more reasons to hate the band, since Kiss, Kanye and U2 have had their say for this quarter.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/metallica-to-issue-27-live-albums-by-end-of-2014-20140917

In other Metallica news, the band recently set a Guinness World Record for touring, earning the distinction of being the first group to play all seven continents. "Seven continents in one year with Antarctica being the gig of a lifetime...." Frontman James Hetfield said in a statement earlier this month. "Yes, 120 scientists and competition winners. Not to mention the 300 very curious penguins!"

The Rose Programming Language
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iRant—

I don’t think it’s a privacy issue. But it was stupid.

My impression is that middle-managers have wrecked Internet Software and Services—the unit behind iTunes and the iTunes Music Store.
While the other teams, Software and Hardware Engineering, exist without management and retain strong engineers, Internet Software and Services hasn’t. Because they’ve been unable to foster a productive engineering culture, product management was introduced. It’s a mess.

Internet Services e.g. the App Store, iTunes and the iTunes Music Store, and Maps, should encourage culture, but they’ve become a wasteland of miss-matched priorities and technology that’s been adopted and abandoned. Apple Pay, iAds, and Messages share resources and priorities—that’s fucked up. And it’s unnecessary.

If Apple spun-out iTunes and the iTunes Music Store from Internet Software and Services, staffed it with engineers who are passionate about the product and music, and treated the unit as an equal to the other three groups, it never would’ve happened. No one would’ve said “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we downloaded a new U2 album onto everyone’s Mac, iPhone, and iPad?” It was dumb decision made by people disinterested in their product and especially disinterested in music.

Blah, blah, blah …