Have U2's 21st century releases done irreparable damage to their legacy?

[LuckyNumber7]

Imagine if it wasn’t U2 who uploaded a new album straight to our phones, but someone like Coldplay, Kanye or Justin Bieber. Someone whose music you’re not a fan of and find the singer mildly insufferable, and tracks from that album kept popping up on shuffle for years afterwards.

Would that be one of your lasting impressions of that artist or would you still judge them on their prior output that you didn’t particularly care for?

It’s very strange that you just described Bono and U2.

 

[monkeyskin]

Well yeah, that’s how many people view them. But the point is that as fans we can overlook that, but not necessarily from artists we’re not fans of.

 

[mikal]

Imagine if it wasn’t U2 who uploaded a new album straight to our phones, but someone like Coldplay, Kanye or Justin Bieber. Someone whose music you’re not a fan of and find the singer mildly insufferable, and tracks from that album kept popping up on shuffle for years afterwards.

Would that be one of your lasting impressions of that artist or would you still judge them on their prior output that you didn’t particularly care for?

I definitely wouldn’t care to the point where I’d be talking about it 7 years later.

 

[womanfish]

Imagine if it wasn’t U2 who uploaded a new album straight to our phones, but someone like Coldplay, Kanye or Justin Bieber. Someone whose music you’re not a fan of and find the singer mildly insufferable, and tracks from that album kept popping up on shuffle for years afterwards.

Would that be one of your lasting impressions of that artist or would you still judge them on their prior output that you didn’t particularly care for?

Being completely honest here. I really wouldn't care. I'd just skip it. Let's be honest, before streaming when people were listening just from their libraries, how many people really just hit shuffle on the ENTIRE library? I mean, we have playlists for a reason.

Now if they did, how many of those people didn't run into a ton of their own songs they would skip anyway? If you have 30,000 songs that you had downloaded over 5, 10, 20 years? There's plenty to skip.

Going one step further, if it was a band that say I liked a lot or even a bit in the past, but then sorta faded away from over say 10 years (for me this would be Coldplay or Foo Fighters) and they showed up free in my library (before streaming) I probably would at least take a listen through it and check it out.

If it was somebody I already hated like Nickelback or Bieber, or someone that just bugged the shit out of me like Kanye, then I'd be like, oh god, I forgot they put that on all the phones. Skip it and be on my way. It certainly wouldn't change my view of their work prior, whether it was Coldplay who I would give a chance to, or Bieber who I wouldn't.
And I truly would NEVER have a visceral reaction and spend years making hyperbolic posts about how traumatizing it was.

 

[monkeyskin]

It clearly does bug people that it keeps popping up on their phones. With streaming, most folks don’t keep any other music on their phones any more, so when getting into a car with a Bluetooth stereo it becomes the default music that auto plays.

I upgraded to a new iPhone recently and that’s what happened every time I got in the car with the stereo synced to it. Really started to piss my wife off. So it’s not like people are bringing up something from 7 years ago, it’s literally still annoying people today. Sometimes for the first time in a while in the case of setting up a new phone and iTunes auto downloads it. That’s why people still grumble over the issue.

Was starting to annoy me and I think it’s their best album post-Pop. I’d certainly be more annoyed if it was bloody Nickelback or some other million selling yet super annoying artist.

 

[mikal]

It clearly does bug people that it keeps popping up on their phones. With streaming, most folks don’t keep any other music on their phones any more, so when getting into a car with a Bluetooth stereo it becomes the default music that auto plays.

I upgraded to a new iPhone recently and that’s what happened every time I got in the car with the stereo synced to it. Really started to piss my wife off. So it’s not like people are bringing up something from 7 years ago, it’s literally still annoying people today. Sometimes for the first time in a while in the case of setting up a new phone and iTunes auto downloads it. That’s why people still grumble over the issue.

Was starting to annoy me and I think it’s their best album post-Pop. I’d certainly be more annoyed if it was bloody Nickelback or some other million selling yet super annoying artist.

I believe there’s also a tool for both Windows and macOS that allows you to delete it. I love Apple but they definitely messed this thing up when they didn’t allow users to delete the album. That would have solved a lot of headaches and I’m surprised that the U2 camp didn’t pressure Apple to resolve it.

 

[womanfish]

It clearly does bug people that it keeps popping up on their phones. With streaming, most folks don’t keep any other music on their phones any more, so when getting into a car with a Bluetooth stereo it becomes the default music that auto plays.

I upgraded to a new iPhone recently and that’s what happened every time I got in the car with the stereo synced to it. Really started to piss my wife off. So it’s not like people are bringing up something from 7 years ago, it’s literally still annoying people today. Sometimes for the first time in a while in the case of setting up a new phone and iTunes auto downloads it. That’s why people still grumble over the issue.

Was starting to annoy me and I think it’s their best album post-Pop. I’d certainly be more annoyed if it was bloody Nickelback or some other million selling yet super annoying artist.

Huh. I get your point here. I guess if you use another streaming service other than Apple Music than it might do that? I just got an iphone 12 and haven't had any issue like that. But I use Apple Music and it usually just starts playing the first song alphabetically in the library. For me it's A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. I know the intro to that song very well now. lol

On the flip side, I was reading through some YouTube comments on some SOI videos the other day. It's pretty remarkable the number of people that got introduced to the band this way. Lots of people that were like 8, 10, 12 years old at the time, and got an ipad and it was the only music on it. LOL.
So they said they listened to it all the time and now they are there 6 or 7 years later watching the video on YouTube.
Others say, I never really listened to U2, but this song came up and really hit me. I got to give em props on this...

So yeah in the larger scheme of things is was a fuck-up. But there definitely are some people out there that discovered them because of it.

 

[womanfish]

I believe there’s also a tool for both Windows and macOS that allows you to delete it. I love Apple but they definitely messed this thing up when they didn’t allow users to delete the album. That would have solved a lot of headaches and I’m surprised that the U2 camp didn’t pressure Apple to resolve it.

I believe there’s also a tool .... the U2 camp...

Shortened version. To the point.

 

[The Panther]

I don't think the i-Phone thing mattered whatsoever to the core U2-audience. That is, the people who loved U2 in the 80s/early 90s. I also doubt it mattered to the next generation who came on board in 2001 or whenever. It was a brief media-hype fueling the fire of people who already hated them anyway, and maybe it mattered to the post-millennial audience who were never going to get into a band older than their Dad.

I'm 45, and most of my friends were into U2 in the late 80s/early 90s, jumped off the bandwagon by the time we were 19 or so, and never went back. Alone among all my friends, I got back into them around 2001 to 2005.

Basically, there were three U2 "eras" of mass success and broad appeal:
-- c.1983 to 1988
--c.1991 to 1994
--c.2000 to 2005

Anything that happened after that is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, as the band were past their peak and had a relatively tiny devoted audience anyway. The bummer of SOI definitively killed off whatever residual grace the 'third act' of U2 had in the 2000s.

Arguing that the i-Phone thing did irreparable damage to their legacy is like arguing that The Beatles' releasing 'Free As A Bird' in 1995 did irreparable damage to their legacy.

 

[doctorwho]

htdaab wasn't adult contemporary, it was just contemporary. It was the only (?) time U2 were in line with what was going on in mainstream rock. I do think the Apple ad hurt them - Vertigo became a bit of a joke, and it was a bad look for a a band who was always against using songs in ads to suddenly be in one, regardless of the nuances of the deal. It made them look like just another old band that sold out...and it only got worse with the SOI spam. They are a joke to a generation, and that will probably hurt their legacy, but the Stones were a joke too, and they recovered just fine. Their legacy was considerably stronger, though - more hits, greater cultural impact, cool af, etc.

I recall this era well and I cannot disagree more. As an older long-time fan, I had no issue with an Apple ad. The world had changed and TV shows, ads, and other media was needed to get attention of the people who bought music. In fact, HTDAAB had their best selling first week sales ever (def. in the SoundScan era). Maybe releasing a free album wasn't great, but I think minimal damage done there, but that's debatable. However, the Apple ad was a good call.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I don’t think anyone in that generation, my generation, thought much of anything at all about Vertigo. South Park? Sure. Most people don’t connect U2 and “sell outs” because they were introduced to U2 as the Apple commercial people in the first place. Vertigo and Bomb were not disrespected. They were generally just not nearly as popular. Bono, and solely Bono, got shit, and it was from South Park.

As prior discussed though, Bono’s individual criticisms caused by South Park don’t live on and its generally understood that South Park shits on everyone. The SOI blunder is what caused them to be uncool rather than just irrelevant.

 

[david]

On a someone related, but side note - next month is the 20th anniversary of when the first iPod was released.

 

[womanfish]

I know we had been looking at the Rolling Stone streaming chart for artists, so I thought it would be interesting to see what the general state of rock music is on the Billboard chart.

So of the top 200 albums, there are 16 rock artists. A whopping 8%

Of those 16 - Thirteen of them are Greatest Hits albums.

The most "current" or least old band on the list - Nickelback, who have been around for 25 years. Next, Nirvana at 34 years, and then Guns n Roses at 35 years.

All the rest - older than that. Many, much older.

So to recap - There are only 3 non-greatest hits albums in the top 200 from rock artists (1.5%) The most recent non-greatest hits album on the list came out exactly 30 years ago this month. Of the 16 bands on the chart, only one band, Nirvana, would be considered "alternative" rock.

 

[mikal]

I was thinking over the weekend, and I decided that the best way for U2 to repair their image (notice I didn't say "legacy") from the iTunes debacle is to simply double down on it.

By the looks of things, we're probably not going to see an album until 2024/2025 anyway, so what better way to get a good laugh is to appear at the Apple Keynote in 2024 for the iPhone 16 launch, announce a new album and then say "Hey everyone, we are making this album available now on iTunes and we've taken even more measures to make sure that you can never delete this album from your iPhone. So now you have 2 albums you can't delete! Hahahaha fuck you!"

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Do it on April 1st and have it unload on April 2nd and you’re golden.

 

[womanfish]

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall during the planning of the SOI thing. I mean, I know hindsight is 20/20 but not sure how they didn't see potential problems no matter how they did this.

Choice 1 - The one they went with - was a turd

Choice 2 - Pop up asking to accept or decline free U2 album - Ok, so it was sent to like 120 million iphones. Imagine if 20 or even 30 million accepted it. That's HUGE. I mean you're talking the amount of the Joshua Tree in people's hands in one day. But what could have or would have been the headline?
"U2 offers new album for free to Apple users - 90 million of them don't want it!"

Choice 3 - The same as choice 1, but allowed people to easily delete it off their phones. In a week or two, you would see stories like - 120 million people were gifted U2's new album - 60 million have gotten rid of it"

Choice 4 - And definitely the safest. Would have been if they would have done an "Accept or Decline" pop up, for purchasing the album for the minimum cost to count as a sale - $4.49. They may have gotten a couple million, who knows. Even if it were only six or seven hundred thousand, that would be great, although it may have still been twisted into a failure.
But this one I think would have been pretty low risk. Lots of artists have had their albums available for discounted prices for a week or two on Apple, so it wouldn't have been anything too out of the norm. The only new part would be having Apple send an actual invite to buy it.
And the reward, could have been the biggest weekly album sale number in history.

 

[mikal]

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall during the planning of the SOI thing. I mean, I know hindsight is 20/20 but not sure how they didn't see potential problems no matter how they did this.

Choice 1 - The one they went with - was a turd

Choice 2 - Pop up asking to accept or decline free U2 album - Ok, so it was sent to like 120 million iphones. Imagine if 20 or even 30 million accepted it. That's HUGE. I mean you're talking the amount of the Joshua Tree in people's hands in one day. But what could have or would have been the headline?
"U2 offers new album for free to Apple users - 90 million of them don't want it!"

Choice 3 - The same as choice 1, but allowed people to easily delete it off their phones. In a week or two, you would see stories like - 120 million people were gifted U2's new album - 60 million have gotten rid of it"

Choice 4 - And definitely the safest. Would have been if they would have done an "Accept or Decline" pop up, for purchasing the album for the minimum cost to count as a sale - $4.49. They may have gotten a couple million, who knows. Even if it were only six or seven hundred thousand, that would be great, although it may have still been twisted into a failure.
But this one I think would have been pretty low risk. Lots of artists have had their albums available for discounted prices for a week or two on Apple, so it wouldn't have been anything too out of the norm. The only new part would be having Apple send an actual invite to buy it.
And the reward, could have been the biggest weekly album sale number in history.

I'll fight this opinion to the death and nothing will change my mind:

U2 did not know going into this that it would be literally impossible to delete the album off your phone. As megalomania as they have been here and there, if they had clearly known that, they wouldn't have ok'd it.

The part that was overlooked was that if you had "Automatically Download Purchases" checked, then you were fucked. That's why I've always put more blame on Apple for this because they either knew this would happen or overlooked that scenario too. Had the option to delete always been there, then this wouldn't have been as big of a deal.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

They still knew that it would be inserted into every single itunes user's music library without permission. They pretty much say exactly that in the actual press conference.

There would have been zero negative press, outside of the usual pitchforks of the world, if they had simply offered it as a free download on the exact same way they did for Invisible - which did over 3 million in downloads.

But they wanted "the biggest ever." They flew too close to the sun on this one and seriously failed to read the room.

 

[mikal]

They still knew that it would be inserted into every single itunes user's music library without permission. They pretty much say exactly that in the actual press conference.

There would have been zero negative press, outside of the usual pitchforks of the world, if they had simply offered it as a free download on the exact same way they did for Invisible - which did over 3 million in downloads.

But they wanted "the biggest ever." They flew too close to the sun on this one and seriously failed to read the room.

That's not my point though. U2 knew what they were doing, but I don't think they knew the full scope from a technical standpoint. If anyone from Apple had said to any members of the band and their management "Oh, and FYI. If anyone who doesn't want this album wants to delete this album, they won't be able to. It'll be stuck there. Are you ok with that?" I can guarantee that at least one member of the band would have said "Woah wait a sec here".

So that's why I put a ton of the blame on Apple here. If everyone simply had the option to press the 3 dots for settings and click "Delete from Library", no one would still be talking about it.

Will we ever know what truly happened? No. But I feel like I've followed the band long enough to know that they wouldn't have been ok with that and I'm guessing that there were some pretty harsh conversations after the fact.

 

[MrPryck2U]

You know, I'd have to think at some point another documentary is going to be made about U2. Perhaps then, U2 can fully clarify the situation for everyone once and for all. We care about this band because they make good music and they're good people. Perhaps something got lost in the technological translation.


As an aside, I'm hoping like heck that U2 has new music coming in 2022. Perhaps at the end of that year. And also hope like heck that Bono gets a makeover.

 

[phanan]

I know we had been looking at the Rolling Stone streaming chart for artists, so I thought it would be interesting to see what the general state of rock music is on the Billboard chart.

So of the top 200 albums, there are 16 rock artists. A whopping 8%

Of those 16 - Thirteen of them are Greatest Hits albums.

The most "current" or least old band on the list - Nickelback, who have been around for 25 years. Next, Nirvana at 34 years, and then Guns n Roses at 35 years.

All the rest - older than that. Many, much older.

So to recap - There are only 3 non-greatest hits albums in the top 200 from rock artists (1.5%) The most recent non-greatest hits album on the list came out exactly 30 years ago this month. Of the 16 bands on the chart, only one band, Nirvana, would be considered "alternative" rock.

One thing to keep in mind with Billboard is that a lot of rock albums by older artists sink like a stone after the first few weeks of release and fall off completely. They just don't have the staying power anymore. So this will change week to week.

Your overall point is still valid though.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

That's not my point though. U2 knew what they were doing, but I don't think they knew the full scope from a technical standpoint. If anyone from Apple had said to any members of the band and their management "Oh, and FYI. If anyone who doesn't want this album wants to delete this album, they won't be able to. It'll be stuck there. Are you ok with that?" I can guarantee that at least one member of the band would have said "Woah wait a sec here".



So that's why I put a ton of the blame on Apple here. If everyone simply had the option to press the 3 dots for settings and click "Delete from Library", no one would still be talking about it.



Will we ever know what truly happened? No. But I feel like I've followed the band long enough to know that they wouldn't have been ok with that and I'm guessing that there were some pretty harsh conversations after the fact.

Yea I mean I can see your point, but I would counter that someone from the U2 team should have asked the question in advance.

These types of deals don't just come together over dinner - so in one of the dozens and dozens of calls and meetings on this that SOMEBODY must have brought up the "well what about people who don't want it" question.

Which is why I believe that both sides knew what would happen and simply didn't think it would be a big deal.

 

[mikal]

Yea I mean I can see your point, but I would counter that someone from the U2 team should have asked the question in advance.

These types of deals don't just come together over dinner - so in one of the dozens and dozens of calls and meetings on this that SOMEBODY must have brought up the "well what about people who don't want it" question.

That I agree with. But I simply don’t think the question was asked or at least sorted through in detail.

 

[DaveC]

someone definitely asked the question, and i'd stake a large wager that the answer given in that call or meeting was "who wouldn't want a free U2 album?? hahaha, moving right along..."

 

[DeVaul]

Get yer free samples ‘ere!

 

[Irvine511]

Yea I mean I can see your point, but I would counter that someone from the U2 team should have asked the question in advance.

These types of deals don't just come together over dinner - so in one of the dozens and dozens of calls and meetings on this that SOMEBODY must have brought up the "well what about people who don't want it" question.

Which is why I believe that both sides knew what would happen and simply didn't think it would be a big deal.

I also think that any other band (big enough to be offered such a deal) would have jumped at this deal.

I really, really want to know what went in in these meetings. I hope there’s some dish in Bono’s autobiography.

 

[Irvine511]

Get yer free samples ‘ere!

View attachment 12958

We all know he’s going to eat that himself.

 

[womanfish]

Yea I mean I can see your point, but I would counter that someone from the U2 team should have asked the question in advance.

These types of deals don't just come together over dinner - so in one of the dozens and dozens of calls and meetings on this that SOMEBODY must have brought up the "well what about people who don't want it" question.

Which is why I believe that both sides knew what would happen and simply didn't think it would be a big deal.

I see both sides. I mean, I can't imagine that U2's management and lawyers, etc... didn't know. But I also could see the band not being privy to every detail. Maybe the band was just sort of big picture. We're getting paid a ton for the album and Apple gives it everyone for free with the touch of a button. It will a cool moment, hopefully people will check it out.

The question had to come up, and maybe the management was sort of like me and thought, well if they don't want to listen to it they can just skip it. Obviously no one was prepared for the collective millennial melt-down that would ensue, when it came them having to skip 1 out of 3000 songs or so if they were on shuffle.

It also shows just how blind they were to the fact that the public loves to see those on top get knocked off their perch. If this was U2 much earlier in their career, it probably would have been fine. But being the "biggest band in the world" for 25 or so years... They were on the chopping block.
You'd think Rattle and Hum and POP may have given them some context, but with that much money flowing there are a lot of blind eyes turned, and assumptions made.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

i don't see any way that two organizations this large and this rich - apple and live nation (who owns oseary's company) - signed off on this deal without knowing every little detail about what would happen. that makes zero sense to me.

what does make sense is that they thought that any backlash would be minimal and the positives outweigh any negatives. it also put a ton of cash into the coffers for U2/LiveNation and also SAVED a lot of promotion money for LiveNation, as apple put $200 million towards promotion. this was also relatively early into the oseary/live nation management deal.

and let's be honest - U2 have always looked to have some sort of gimmick to get their music out there.

apple had just bought Beats earlier that year and thought it was a no brainer to partner up again with the U2 cash cow. it was also a time when they were trying to figure out their streaming strategy to try and play catch up against Spotify - so again, they thought it was a no brainer.

they flew to close to the sun and got burned.

 

[womanfish]

i don't see any way that two organizations this large and this rich - apple and live nation (who owns oseary's company) - signed off on this deal without knowing every little detail about what would happen. that makes zero sense to me.

what does make sense is that they thought that any backlash would be minimal and the positives outweigh any negatives. it also put a ton of cash into the coffers for U2/LiveNation and also SAVED a lot of promotion money for LiveNation, as apple put $200 million towards promotion. this was also relatively early into the oseary/live nation management deal.

and let's be honest - U2 have always looked to have some sort of gimmick to get their music out there.

apple had just bought Beats earlier that year and thought it was a no brainer to partner up again with the U2 cash cow. it was also a time when they were trying to figure out their streaming strategy to try and play catch up against Spotify - so again, they thought it was a no brainer.

they flew to close to the sun and got burned.

Yep. They had the idea, money was flowing and no little thing like how it might actually be received seemed to come into play.

Like George Costanza, they flew too close to sun on wings of pastrami