Nick66
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
I don't think SOI, creatively, was entirely on their terms. In fact, I can document two different band members disagreeing publicly about the creative direction they were going to take on it while in the studio. U2 had no idea what direction they wanted to go in until the majority won the argument. Suddenly Bono's quiet ideas (SOA, busking, etc.) are voted down in favor of Larry (again) wanting to hear more U2 songs in his hometown pub.
SOI was certainly created by U2 "on their terms"...unless you're suggesting Apple interfered with the creative process (unlikely and probably impossible considering how late the deal came together). U2 can do something on their own terms and it still result in a compromised product. But that's because it's a compromise the band as a collective chose to make. No one else. I don't care if Edge, Adam and Larry all wanted one thing and Bono wanted another. As long as it's U2's decision, and not of any outsider, it's on their own terms. However they may go about their decision making and creative process.
But whatever their compromises are, it's not because a record company or some other outside force dictated artistic terms to U2, or interfered with the creative process. That's what it means to do something on your own terms. In that way, U2 is in a position that few bands are. If U2's art is being compromised, it's because U2, and no one else, is compromising it. If U2 chooses to make a different record than they'd otherwise make absent commercial considerations, that's on their terms because those commercial considerations are important to them. When they bowed to the advice Iovine and apparently made changes to NLOTH at the last minute because they were worried it wouldn't get play, that was U2's choice, on their own terms. Iovine couldn't force terms on U2.
Again, if some outside entity forced U2 to compromise their art for commerce, that would be something different. But that's not a position U2 has been in for quite some time.