The "Apple Stunt"
- Thread starter CosmoKramer
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
Ordinary Love has vaulted 170 places, and is back in the top 50!
So basically in the early stages it has paid off, this is before the ad has really aired or any sort of TV promotion
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Vlad n U 2
Blue Crack Addict
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Global iTunes #1 too, for what it's worth.
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
Yeah, when is any promo stuff actually going to kick off?
I still keep thinking, after the sales performance of NLOTH (regardless of what fans thought about it) - who needed who the most going into this.
Did Apple need U2? (possibly not that much)
Dud u2 need Apple? (possibly quite a lot)
If U2 had released SOI via traditional means, I think it would have been obvious what would have happened - great album, poor sales.
Did Apple need U2? (possibly not that much)
Dud u2 need Apple? (possibly quite a lot)
If U2 had released SOI via traditional means, I think it would have been obvious what would have happened - great album, poor sales.
Gonna Run 2 U
New Yorker
More articles coming out today bashing how they released it which I believe is leading to the writers negatively going into it before listening. It makes me wonder how successful it would have been say if they released Iris 24 hours for free as a single and surprised released the album for $ the next day.
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Good question I still think they need to be doing something to promote it
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Maybe they will go to ground again for a while until the physical product comes out in October. What will promo achieve at the moment if its already available to everyone for free on the various Apple platforms? Maybe they will use the 4 weeks to finish off Songs of Existence! If only......
If the Apple TV ad starts to get heavy promotion around the world that will help them a lot too, and there's no work involved in that.
If the Apple TV ad starts to get heavy promotion around the world that will help them a lot too, and there's no work involved in that.
I actually think it is a pretty smart business move for Apple too. By having exclusivity for a month they could easily snag a few million addition iTunes users/subscribers out of it, which will over time turn into more and more paid for downloads, etc.
In Finland NLOTH is suddenly #8 and U218 Singles #9. I'm tempted to say that this new free album has made some of the "new fans" to check also older U2 material. Normally these older albums appear on the lists only when the band is having a concert in the country. So this "stunt" clearly is working. And that is ass kicking!!
Good point actually about the promo not starting properly until October, I an still see them doing a couple of things to help push the "free" album but the main push will probably come in October with maybe a tour announcement November?
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
Yeah, the charting of old albums is amazing. They won't make their full investment back, but they will certainly cash in with the older albums, and the chart performance is pretty amazing.
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
18 Singles is number 1 in Bulgaria, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
The Joshua Tree is number 1 in Czech Republic and Poland, and Achtung Baby is number 1 in Hungary and Malta
Vlad n U 2
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Think the chart stats for the other parts of the discography is probably more telling than the download numbers for SOI.
Yeah you maybe right . The whole thing did its job. In the uk nearly the whole back catalogue is in the top 150
Dane-Dane
The Fly
Yes and not only that just think how many of that younger generation will now be opened up to the Ramones thanks to the first song Miracle. Ha,ha Bono giving back to his idols.
Well... Closing with 40 wouldn't really be shaking anything up.
Multiple live albums would only work if they had true rotating set lists, where you didn't know what songs were going to show up from night to night. That's the only reason why it works for Pearl Jam. If U2 have the same set lists every night, it would be silly.
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kkaider
Acrobat
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Yeah, #FirstWorldProblems!
womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Thanks for starting this thread. I think a lot of people are freaking out over some of the negative reviews from critics, who are mostly focusing on the way the album was released over the actual music.
Anyway, if you think about the fact that if even 10% keep it and actually listen to it a little, you might get half of those people that find it pretty good, that 25 million people. Of those, if you get half that like it quite a bit and go and discover some of their older stuff, and then beyond that, want to go see them live, you've got over 10 million new "fans"
Even if you slice THAT number in half and they still end up winning this thing.
Take that into consideration along with the fact that this whole process has just begun. The Apple ads haven't even aired yet. And while the vocal minority will blather on their little blog that 800 people look at about how corporate and lame U2 is for doing it, there are 10,000 other middle aged people that haven't given U2 a fair shake in the last decade that might say, damn that's a pretty cool tune. I'll check out the album.
Beyond the ad, it seems like there will be more to come. So the negative reviews will come. Especially when doing something bold like this. Critics love to try and knock the biggest and best off their pedestal. They are mostly bitter little people. But in the big scheme of things, U2 will win. Again.
Anyway, if you think about the fact that if even 10% keep it and actually listen to it a little, you might get half of those people that find it pretty good, that 25 million people. Of those, if you get half that like it quite a bit and go and discover some of their older stuff, and then beyond that, want to go see them live, you've got over 10 million new "fans"
Even if you slice THAT number in half and they still end up winning this thing.
Take that into consideration along with the fact that this whole process has just begun. The Apple ads haven't even aired yet. And while the vocal minority will blather on their little blog that 800 people look at about how corporate and lame U2 is for doing it, there are 10,000 other middle aged people that haven't given U2 a fair shake in the last decade that might say, damn that's a pretty cool tune. I'll check out the album.
Beyond the ad, it seems like there will be more to come. So the negative reviews will come. Especially when doing something bold like this. Critics love to try and knock the biggest and best off their pedestal. They are mostly bitter little people. But in the big scheme of things, U2 will win. Again.
Moser
Refugee
If older albums are being pushed to #1, then I think that is a telling sign that the new album is being received well.
Moser
Refugee
Let's not muddy the fine line between a proper album review, and a news article just recycling other news articles about the album.
The proper albums reviews have been mainly positive.
womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
It's very nice to see my favorite band get their new album in so many people's ears, immediately, for free - it was a clever, creative idea.
The cynic in me thinks that if they'd released this album normally, it would have done extremely poorly. Worse than NLOTH, by far. Why? Well, the state of the music industry, for one. Two, there are no hits on this album. There won't be any songs that even really chart, is my prediction. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I applaud the band for making music they want to make, I suppose.
Did the band get spooked, realize there were no hit singles, and decide to give it away for free? Maybe. This way, they can brag about it having record download numbers, and any sales figures down the road will be "invalid" due to the unique distribution format. Paul McGuinness would be proud.
Gotta disagree here. After listening through the album about 15 times. I think that California begs to be on the radio, EBW could be another out of the blue "hit" for the band. I think it is far better than Coldplay's current hit Stars in the Sky which is getting a lot of play.
Song for Someone could also be a hit if pushed properly, even though I don't love it.
womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Wish I could agree with you. But if you go to the official review thread, you will see over half of the current reviews to be so so to incredibly negative.
We still have a lot to go, so it could change, but critically its getting kicked around.
Moser
Refugee
I haven't gone through all the reviews, but just at look at the first page of reviews. They're all positive. Unless you consider anything short of 4/5 stars as being negative. I don't
sfu2doc
The Fly
Problem is that many of the negative album reviews seem more caught up in the "you hijacked my iTunes" narrative than actually reviewing the damn songs!
U2 are easy targets in this fragmented media world. Also, the news cycle is so fast now that the album release surprise will be old news by tomorrow!
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