Next Album Rumours Thread II - Songs of Ass Scent

[DeVaul]

They’re hungry and still want to be great but are too afraid of mainstream rejection to go full-on in a single direction. Hedging for over a decade now.

 

[DaveC]

guy oseary seems to think the music business is still operating on the same principles as the early 00s. i think that losing paul mcguinness is one of the absolute worst things that ever happened to the band.

 

[Fangorn]

guy oseary seems to think the music business is still operating on the same principles as the early 00s. i think that losing paul mcguinness is one of the absolute worst things that ever happened to the band.

That's definitely true. I wish he'd come back.

 

[DeVaul]

The same Paul McGuinness that thought doing a concert live on Good Morning America and 5 nights of Letterman was the right promo for an album launch in 2009? How about ditching Apple for Blackberry tour promo? I have a hard time believing things would be all that different, he was just a more vocal presence.

 

[DaveC]

of course he made some poor decisions too but at least paul seemed like he actually gave a shit about the band in ways other than how many dollars they could earn for him. maybe that's naive, but either way i think they could use some new management that's a little more in touch with how to market a classic band in 2020.

 

[U2387]

If people are going to make the argument that they are a little tone deaf/clueless on how to market themselves and retain credibility these days, they'll get no argument here. However, lets not make the mistake of calling them greedy or "only focused on money" or falsely claim that they "never give anything away" just because they don't take our preferred approach!

It's almost like " with fans like us, who needs detractors?" Seriously. I can be as critical as anyone, but was the Elevation Boston show streamed on U2.com not for free? How about Invisible being available as a free download and proceeds going to global health? How about the fact that U2 is a bargain to see live compared to some legacy acts with more "street cred" these days? In general, but especially with the GA pricing structure.

We can say whatever we want, try to rewrite history all we want, but 2 things are undeniable facts.

1) U2 has always had the same business philosophy. This is evident many places over they years, but can be summed up by Larry saying, in response to criticism a few years back "the fact is, as soon as we sign our names on that dotted line to sell our art for money, we've become businessmen. " He was responding to criticism they "sold out" and basically stated they work with people/businesses they agree with.

Eg -they declined Coke's offer to pay for Even better than the real thing for their commercials but signed on with Apple because they were developing a download service that compensated artists.

2) If they only care about money, they have a strange way of showing it over the years.

In addition to things they give away for free (regardless of they're what we would give away) and the concert pricing structure, there's the money they give to charities from almost every album or tour. If they were greedy, they'd be keeping that.

Also, just like we may not agree with WHAT they allow access to for free or the business deals they make, we may not find much to enjoy in the musical direction they take on particular albums/tours. However, what is a FACT, is that they could've just toured on their legacy after ZOO TV and raked in far more money than they have with simple stage productions and no new material costing them money to make.

They could've billed ATYCLB as their return from the experimental wilderness even without Pop. Pop could've been replaced by JT 10 in 1997. With the ATYCLB success and increase in the fan base, they could've made still more money. Tour the U2 catalog, make it a big annual or semi annual thing like DMB used to do, or Billy Joel does, and then have big birthday parties for whatever big album is turning whatever age.

Instead, they put lots of time, money and effort into new material that they believe in and continue to innovate on tour. Just since Elevation, we've seen the heart/ellipse concept, the floor length screen/run way from I/E and the Vertigo light curtain copied by other acts. Probably more I'm missing. Even JT 30, though it had nothing revolutionary, went to great lengths to have the highest tech screen with all original photography/videography when that would've been the easiest time to just recreate the canvas tree with a few screens showing the band.

This is not how a band that's just about money tours.

This idea that U2 are money hungry whores is a ridiculous leap to make from "I don't agree with X or Y move by the band and it's lost them cred."

 

[ascender_RS]

If there's one thing this band is terrible at, it's accurately describing their new music.

"Edge is on fire".

What more do you want, honestly?!

 

[Hollow Island]

They've been fantastically wealthy for at least 3/4 of their career so I don't think it's fair to say they're in it for the money now. Why would greed be a larger motivation in 2017 than in 1997?

They could probably make more money licensing Streets to Mercedes than from a new album, and it would certainly be easier. It would be easier to tour without spending years on an album, and they don't need to try to stage a groundbreaking show every time they tour. If money was a primary motivator they wouldn't try so hard.

I think fame fucked them up though. And that they genuinely don't know what to do. And that not writing as a band hurts them. And that two of them have pretty lame taste - how else can you explain them choosing Everybody Hurts as their favorite REM song? That's "i only listen to the radio in the car and buy one or tow cds a year" type shit.

 

[Hewson]

"Edge is on fire".

What more do you want, honestly?!

Just a little "punk rock from Venus" mixed in and we're all good.

 

[lazarus]

If people are going to make the argument that they are a little tone deaf/clueless on how to market themselves and retain credibility these days, they'll get no argument here. However, lets not make the mistake of calling them greedy or "only focused on money" or falsely claim that they "never give anything away" just because they don't take our preferred approach!

It's almost like " with fans like us, who needs detractors?" Seriously. I can be as critical as anyone, but was the Elevation Boston show streamed on U2.com not for free? How about Invisible being available as a free download and proceeds going to global health? How about the fact that U2 is a bargain to see live compared to some legacy acts with more "street cred" these days? In general, but especially with the GA pricing structure.

We can say whatever we want, try to rewrite history all we want, but 2 things are undeniable facts.

1) U2 has always had the same business philosophy. This is evident many places over they years, but can be summed up by Larry saying, in response to criticism a few years back "the fact is, as soon as we sign our names on that dotted line to sell our art for money, we've become businessmen. " He was responding to criticism they "sold out" and basically stated they work with people/businesses they agree with.

Eg -they declined Coke's offer to pay for Even better than the real thing for their commercials but signed on with Apple because they were developing a download service that compensated artists.

2) If they only care about money, they have a strange way of showing it over the years.

In addition to things they give away for free (regardless of they're what we would give away) and the concert pricing structure, there's the money they give to charities from almost every album or tour. If they were greedy, they'd be keeping that.

Also, just like we may not agree with WHAT they allow access to for free or the business deals they make, we may not find much to enjoy in the musical direction they take on particular albums/tours. However, what is a FACT, is that they could've just toured on their legacy after ZOO TV and raked in far more money than they have with simple stage productions and no new material costing them money to make.

They could've billed ATYCLB as their return from the experimental wilderness even without Pop. Pop could've been replaced by JT 10 in 1997. With the ATYCLB success and increase in the fan base, they could've made still more money. Tour the U2 catalog, make it a big annual or semi annual thing like DMB used to do, or Billy Joel does, and then have big birthday parties for whatever big album is turning whatever age.

Instead, they put lots of time, money and effort into new material that they believe in and continue to innovate on tour. Just since Elevation, we've seen the heart/ellipse concept, the floor length screen/run way from I/E and the Vertigo light curtain copied by other acts. Probably more I'm missing. Even JT 30, though it had nothing revolutionary, went to great lengths to have the highest tech screen with all original photography/videography when that would've been the easiest time to just recreate the canvas tree with a few screens showing the band.

This is not how a band that's just about money tours.

This idea that U2 are money hungry whores is a ridiculous leap to make from "I don't agree with X or Y move by the band and it's lost them cred."

All of this. And I think we're ignoring an important point: the SOI Apple release was a debacle because of only one reason: the album being automatically downloaded to people's devices. If it's merely available to download for free by choice, the whole PR nightmare doesn't happen, and they look totally in touch with modern music by collaborating with Apple.

So it wasn't the idea itself that was idiotic, it was not understanding the full ramifications of the execution of it. We can argue whether or not they knew this would happen, but it doesn't mean the whole thing was poorly conceived.

 

[Hollow Island]

I think it was poorly conceived because tying SOI to Apple made them seem like corporate rock dinosaurs, but it's common for megastars to tie their albums to a specific service so maybe I'm the dinosaur. I still find artists acting as pitchmen to be skeezy.

But yeah, the main problem in the real world was auto download. At least ppl learned a bit about internet security!

 

[lazarus]

Beyonce had a surprise release of her self-titled album exclusively through iTunes less than a year earlier, and wasn't available anywhere else for a week.

Not sure how that makes U2 dinosaurs for similarly going with Apple. And the fact that their album was free made it a novel twist on what she had just done.

 

[DeVaul]

While the primary problem was the lack of opt-in, this wasn’t exactly “cool”:
View attachment 12730

 

[lazarus]

Thank you for reminding me of the "high-one", which I thought I had burned from my memory.

 

[pacemaker]

McGuinness retiring amidst the LiveNation deal AND the 00s resurgence in popularity and goodwill coming to an end must have at least been a huge blow to the structure of U2 as a band and a business. I may be wrong, but I can't think of such a drastic change at U2, Inc. otherwise. For better or for worse, they lost some of the consistency they'd probably come to rely on for the ~30 years prior.

The various deals don't bother me on a monetary level. The idea of "selling out" is so antiquated and mean spirited - if anyone should be making stupid amounts of money these days, it's artists. However, these deals seem to act as distractions from making music, or end up influencing their creative confidence in what they're working on. Also, they're probably mostly bored and over it these days, and are surviving by chasing the dragon of finding new inspirations (while dutifully fulfilling various contracts).

 

[Hollow Island]

Beyonce had a surprise release of her self-titled album exclusively through iTunes less than a year earlier, and wasn't available anywhere else for a week.

Not sure how that makes U2 dinosaurs for similarly going with Apple. And the fact that their album was free made it a novel twist on what she had just done.

Exactly. I acknowledged that when I said it was not uncommon and that I was the dinosaur for thinking corporate tie ins were a corporate rock dinosaur move. I grew up in the 90s when those things were frowned upon. I still hate them.

 

[Hollow Island]

The idea of "selling out" is so antiquated and mean spirited - if anyone should be making stupid amounts of money these days, it's artists. However, these deals seem to act as distractions from making music, or end up influencing their creative confidence in what they're working on.

Yup. That's one huge problem.

There's a difference between an artist coming up now who has no hope of making money from sales licensing songs or partnering with corps and obscenely wealthy people like Beyonce and U2 doing it. When they do it it represents nothing more than greed. They don't need to do it. And when U2 weren't rich, they knew it was a degrading thing to do.

 

[lazarus]

Well I was born in the 70s and have the same attitude towards bands selling songs to corporations. But I still maintain that U2's work with Apple doesn't really cross the line as they're collaborating with a music and video distributor/intermediary. Doing a commercial for an iPod or iTunes isn't the same as selling shoes because it's about the music and how people can hear it, not an unrelated product.

If U2 wanted to, they could be selling their songs to all kinds of corporations that have nothing to do with music, like Nike, McDonalds, Chevrolet, Budweiser, whatever. And clearly they're not interested in that kind of transaction, so they maintain their integrity IMO. I don't think it's degrading at all, it was a very smart move to get involved with this burgeoning technology early on and become the face of digital music, quite literally, as Bono's profile was still being used as one of Apples music app icons up until a couple years ago.

 

[DaveC]

time for a new thread. whoever has a good title, go for it (please no terrible boob puns)

 

[U2387]

All of this. And I think we're ignoring an important point: the SOI Apple release was a debacle because of only one reason: the album being automatically downloaded to people's devices. If it's merely available to download for free by choice, the whole PR nightmare doesn't happen, and they look totally in touch with modern music by collaborating with Apple.

So it wasn't the idea itself that was idiotic, it was not understanding the full ramifications of the execution of it. We can argue whether or not they knew this would happen, but it doesn't mean the whole thing was poorly conceived.

Thank you!

Your expansion on the Apple release is also 100% spot on!

I think, like you, that a discussion on whether the band knew the auto download would happen is pretty much irrelevant. For what little to nothing it's worth, I don't think, when you read their statements in the month afterwards, they intended for it to go like that. Bono "we meant to say the milk is on the door step, when in reality, the milk was in the middle of your living room."

The bigger issue, as you stated, is that distraction aside, it looks like an innovative, in touch way to release music and definitely buys them a more "on the merits" judgement of the album.

As big of a nightmare as it was, no denying that, I still think it got blown out of proportion in popular culture and definitely here.

Maybe I have this all wrong, but it seems like it became a bigger issue/the butt of jokes more a couple years later than it was at the time. I seem to remember a good deal of talk about it for a month, then it got overshadowed by some excellent reviews of promo tour performances, particularly EBW from the Bambi awards in Germany a few days before Bono's accident. Similarly, after the promotions resumed with Fallon, the run up to the tour and the actual tour, all press seemed to be very good to excellent!

I think people started to actually digest the album for what it was, and the performances on I&E, especially Leg 1, were out of this world.

Whatever the miscalculation was, they climbed out of it pretty fast.

I think Boots at the Grammy's in 2009 and Get Out on the barge in 2018 had a bigger immediate negative impact on U2's image.

 

[ascender_RS]

The automatic downloading of SOI was such a massive mis-step, I'm absolutely flabbergasted that nobody in their inner circle or even the Apple leadership team called it out as such.

On the flip side, it was such an over-reaction by people which just kind of sums up everything that's wrong with social media and the internet these days. Add-in Bono and you have the perfect storm for people to moan about.

 

[Fangorn]

The automatic downloading of SOI was such a massive mis-step, I'm absolutely flabbergasted that nobody in their inner circle or even the Apple leadership team called it out as such.

On the flip side, it was such an over-reaction by people which just kind of sums up everything that's wrong with social media and the internet these days. Add-in Bono and you have the perfect storm for people to moan about.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Apple's decision to be honest.

 

[Hollow Island]

Well I was born in the 70s and have the same attitude towards bands selling songs to corporations. But I still maintain that U2's work with Apple doesn't really cross the line as they're collaborating with a music and video distributor/intermediary. Doing a commercial for an iPod or iTunes isn't the same as selling shoes because it's about the music and how people can hear it, not an unrelated product.

If U2 wanted to, they could be selling their songs to all kinds of corporations that have nothing to do with music, like Nike, McDonalds, Chevrolet, Budweiser, whatever. And clearly they're not interested in that kind of transaction, so they maintain their integrity IMO. I don't think it's degrading at all, it was a very smart move to get involved with this burgeoning technology early on and become the face of digital music, quite literally, as Bono's profile was still being used as one of Apples music app icons up until a couple years ago.

You know, I agree with you. I still don't like platform exclusives. The 360 Blackberry deal is really the one that rubbed me the wrong way. I wish U2 didn't test the strike zone and were more straight-down-the-middle like REM.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Could you imagine Bono trying to sell shoes [emoji23]

 

[lazarus]

I think Elevation would go perfectly with selling lifts.