It’s only Thursday, but U2 lead guitarist Edge has already won quote-of-the-week.
It comes in an upcoming interview with Time (paywall), via Re/code. Here’s what Edge had to say concerning the recent deal with Apple that saw the company push free copies of the band’s 13th studio album to all iTunes users –
“[It was] actually incredibly subversive. It’s really punk rock, it’s really disruptive*.”
If you’re an Android user and/or spent the last week in a box, you could have missed the big U2/Apple controversy. Last week, during Apple’s big press event for the iPhone 6, CEO Tim Cook gave U2′s newest album, Songs of Innocence, to every single iTunes user – for free.
But here’s the thing – instead of just allowing users to download the album for free if they wanted to do so, Apple pushed the album to everyone. It was mandatory U2.
This led to lots of people waking up in a why the fuck is there U2 on my phone stupor, followed by a pretty significant backlash. The social media outcry was so intense, Apple was forced to create a dedicated page with the sole purpose of helping people remove the album from their libraries with one click.
The deal was reportedly worth a giant royalty fee and a marketing budget of $100 million for the legendary Irish band. With 38 million people accessing the new album, Apple boasted that the album release was the biggest of all time. Well, of course it was.
So, that leads us to Edge and his rosy view of the deal. Was it the worst thing ever to find a free album in your iTunes library. No, of course not. But punk rock?
*I’ll give you disruptive, as it was rather disrupting to force millions and million of people to own an album.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
