I'm really proud of you
New Album Discussion 1 - Songs of..... - Unreasonable guitar album
- Thread starter dan_smee
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
her SNL appearance this weekend just became Must See TV.
SOI Apple release unquestionably hurt their public perception and still does.
The result was horrible. full stop.
However, it will be hard to convince me that the band meant for the auto download, can't remove it thing to happen!
Bono, in his only real serious statement on the matter, taking responsibility made the analogy of " we intended to say the milk is on your door step! When really , we left it in the middle of your living room floor to trip over!"
Why make a statement like that if you meant to shove it in everyone's library? You could say "damage control" but they didn't really seem to see the damage. It was almost an aside in a long interview. Larry even weighed in very pointedly saying he "couldn't care less" and went on about all kinds of things we see every day without granting the company, artist, person pushing them our permission.
To me, Invisible was the test run and very likely what they understood the free option to be with the bigger release.
Option to download for free. Not automatically added to your library.
I recall the backlash and butt of jokes thing being big at the time, but to me, it seemed to build over time.
And I also feel like the band was , again, shock of all shocks, pretty tone deaf to the people who thought it was pretentious and annoying. So they shrugged it off and took all the "blame" because basically, they didn't see a problem.
They probably figured they could go and point out strongly that they intended to do exactly what they'd done with Invisible. Then decided against that due to the miscalculation that any trouble that caused their relationship with Apple would be worse than the public backlash.
The result was horrible. full stop.
However, it will be hard to convince me that the band meant for the auto download, can't remove it thing to happen!
Bono, in his only real serious statement on the matter, taking responsibility made the analogy of " we intended to say the milk is on your door step! When really , we left it in the middle of your living room floor to trip over!"
Why make a statement like that if you meant to shove it in everyone's library? You could say "damage control" but they didn't really seem to see the damage. It was almost an aside in a long interview. Larry even weighed in very pointedly saying he "couldn't care less" and went on about all kinds of things we see every day without granting the company, artist, person pushing them our permission.
To me, Invisible was the test run and very likely what they understood the free option to be with the bigger release.
Option to download for free. Not automatically added to your library.
I recall the backlash and butt of jokes thing being big at the time, but to me, it seemed to build over time.
And I also feel like the band was , again, shock of all shocks, pretty tone deaf to the people who thought it was pretentious and annoying. So they shrugged it off and took all the "blame" because basically, they didn't see a problem.
They probably figured they could go and point out strongly that they intended to do exactly what they'd done with Invisible. Then decided against that due to the miscalculation that any trouble that caused their relationship with Apple would be worse than the public backlash.
That's all fine and dandy, but Bono talked about it in his book and said that the idea to put it in everyone's library was his.
I don't have the physical copy of the book. I can't recall him explicitly citing the automatic download part of it and everything I find online from that passage still implies to me that he was pretty ignorant of what happened with the technology side, especially in advance when he talks about the conversation that took place with Cook. If anything, it places the responsibility even more into Apple's hands despite Bono trying his best to accept all the blame. Maybe I'm missing a part of it?
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i might just make this a sticky on the forum now...
The Forbidden Fruit
Our new manager, Guy O, as Guy Oseary was known, was far from anxious about digital technology. He was excited by it, suggesting that in the end more people were going to access more music, and in time it would work well for songwriters and singers and players. He also believed artists could surf this technological wave and speak directly with our audiences. That was the plan for the release of Songs of Innocence. Why make fewer CDs for people buying fewer CD players when you could go straight to everyone who has ever bought a U2 album and deliver the new one digitally?
“Free music?” asks Tim Cook, with a look of mild incredulity. “Are you talking about free music?”
Tim is the CEO of Apple, and we’re in his office in Cupertino. Guy, me, Eddy Cue, and Phil Schiller, and we’ve just played the team some of our songs of innocence.
“You want to give this music away free? But the whole point of what we’re trying to do at Apple is to not give away music free. The point is to make sure musicians get paid. We don’t see music as a loss leader.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think we give it away free. I think you pay us for it, and then you give it away free, as a gift to people. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Tim Cook raised an eyebrow. “You mean we pay for the album and then just distribute it?”
I said, “Yeah, like when Netflix buys the movie and gives it away to subscribers.”
Tim looks at me as if I’m explaining the alphabet to an English professor. “But we’re not a subscription organization.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Let ours be the first.”
Tim is not convinced.
“There’s something not right about giving your art away for free,” he says. “And this is just to people who like U2?”
“Well,” I replied, “I think we should give it away to everybody. I mean, it’s their choice whether they want to listen to it.”
See what just happened?
You might call it vaunting ambition. Or vaulting. Critics might accuse me of overreach. It is.
If just getting our music to people who like our music was the idea, that was a good idea. But if the idea was getting our music to people who might not have had a remote interest in our music, maybe there might be some pushback. But what’s the worst that could happen? It would be like junk mail. Wouldn’t it? Like taking our bottle of milk and leaving it on the doorstep of every house in the neighborhood.
Not. Quite. True.
On September 9, 2014, we didn’t just put our bottle of milk at the door but in every fridge in every house in town. In some cases we poured it onto the good people’s cornflakes. And some people like to pour their own milk. And others are lactose intolerant.
I take full responsibility. Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite. As one social media wisecracker put it, “Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.”
Or, less kind, “The free U2 album is overpriced.”
Mea culpa.
At first I thought this was just an internet squall. We were Santa Claus and we’d knocked a few bricks out as we went down the chimney with our bag of songs. But quite quickly we realized we’d bumped into a serious discussion about the concern people have about the access of Big Tech to our lives. The part of me that will always be punk rock thought this was exactly what The Clash would do. Subversive. But subversive is hard to claim when you’re working with a company that’s about to be the biggest on earth.
—
For all the custard pies it brought Apple—who swiftly provided a way to delete the album—Tim Cook never blinked.
“You talked us into an experiment,” he said. “We ran with it. It may not have worked, but we have to experiment because the music business in its present form is not working for everyone.”
If you need any more clues as to why Steve Jobs picked Tim Cook to take on the leadership of Apple, this is one. Probably instinctively conservative, he was ready to try something different to solve a problem. When it went wrong, he was ready to take responsibility. And while he couldn’t fire the person who put the problem on his desk, it would have been all too easy to point the finger at me. On the contrary he continued to trust us, not least by spending over a quarter of a billion of Apple’s dollars supporting (RED), money going directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
We’d stepped into a communications and civil liberties minefield. We’d learned a lesson, but we’d have to be careful where we would tread for some time. It was not just a banana skin. It was a land mine.
—
There were other urgencies. A tragedy, two days before we debuted the songs in Vancouver at the opening of the Innocence + Experience Tour. Larry’s father, Larry Mullen Sr., died at the grand age of ninety-two. Larry returned four and a half thousand miles home for a day to bury this most unquantifiable figure in his life. But he was back onstage for the opening night, and as the shows came and went, I felt that the band had more love for the music it made than ever.
And for each other.
Love. That’s a big word to throw around.
The Forbidden Fruit
Our new manager, Guy O, as Guy Oseary was known, was far from anxious about digital technology. He was excited by it, suggesting that in the end more people were going to access more music, and in time it would work well for songwriters and singers and players. He also believed artists could surf this technological wave and speak directly with our audiences. That was the plan for the release of Songs of Innocence. Why make fewer CDs for people buying fewer CD players when you could go straight to everyone who has ever bought a U2 album and deliver the new one digitally?
“Free music?” asks Tim Cook, with a look of mild incredulity. “Are you talking about free music?”
Tim is the CEO of Apple, and we’re in his office in Cupertino. Guy, me, Eddy Cue, and Phil Schiller, and we’ve just played the team some of our songs of innocence.
“You want to give this music away free? But the whole point of what we’re trying to do at Apple is to not give away music free. The point is to make sure musicians get paid. We don’t see music as a loss leader.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think we give it away free. I think you pay us for it, and then you give it away free, as a gift to people. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Tim Cook raised an eyebrow. “You mean we pay for the album and then just distribute it?”
I said, “Yeah, like when Netflix buys the movie and gives it away to subscribers.”
Tim looks at me as if I’m explaining the alphabet to an English professor. “But we’re not a subscription organization.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Let ours be the first.”
Tim is not convinced.
“There’s something not right about giving your art away for free,” he says. “And this is just to people who like U2?”
“Well,” I replied, “I think we should give it away to everybody. I mean, it’s their choice whether they want to listen to it.”
See what just happened?
You might call it vaunting ambition. Or vaulting. Critics might accuse me of overreach. It is.
If just getting our music to people who like our music was the idea, that was a good idea. But if the idea was getting our music to people who might not have had a remote interest in our music, maybe there might be some pushback. But what’s the worst that could happen? It would be like junk mail. Wouldn’t it? Like taking our bottle of milk and leaving it on the doorstep of every house in the neighborhood.
Not. Quite. True.
On September 9, 2014, we didn’t just put our bottle of milk at the door but in every fridge in every house in town. In some cases we poured it onto the good people’s cornflakes. And some people like to pour their own milk. And others are lactose intolerant.
I take full responsibility. Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite. As one social media wisecracker put it, “Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.”
Or, less kind, “The free U2 album is overpriced.”
Mea culpa.
At first I thought this was just an internet squall. We were Santa Claus and we’d knocked a few bricks out as we went down the chimney with our bag of songs. But quite quickly we realized we’d bumped into a serious discussion about the concern people have about the access of Big Tech to our lives. The part of me that will always be punk rock thought this was exactly what The Clash would do. Subversive. But subversive is hard to claim when you’re working with a company that’s about to be the biggest on earth.
—
For all the custard pies it brought Apple—who swiftly provided a way to delete the album—Tim Cook never blinked.
“You talked us into an experiment,” he said. “We ran with it. It may not have worked, but we have to experiment because the music business in its present form is not working for everyone.”
If you need any more clues as to why Steve Jobs picked Tim Cook to take on the leadership of Apple, this is one. Probably instinctively conservative, he was ready to try something different to solve a problem. When it went wrong, he was ready to take responsibility. And while he couldn’t fire the person who put the problem on his desk, it would have been all too easy to point the finger at me. On the contrary he continued to trust us, not least by spending over a quarter of a billion of Apple’s dollars supporting (RED), money going directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
We’d stepped into a communications and civil liberties minefield. We’d learned a lesson, but we’d have to be careful where we would tread for some time. It was not just a banana skin. It was a land mine.
—
There were other urgencies. A tragedy, two days before we debuted the songs in Vancouver at the opening of the Innocence + Experience Tour. Larry’s father, Larry Mullen Sr., died at the grand age of ninety-two. Larry returned four and a half thousand miles home for a day to bury this most unquantifiable figure in his life. But he was back onstage for the opening night, and as the shows came and went, I felt that the band had more love for the music it made than ever.
And for each other.
Love. That’s a big word to throw around.
In early 2014 - Invisible was available as a free download.
In September 2014 - the approach was shifted from a free download to a free gift, given to everyone.
That was a clear shift in approach. Bono has admitted, in his own book, that the idea for the change in approach was his, and that all blame should be on him.
In September 2014 - the approach was shifted from a free download to a free gift, given to everyone.
That was a clear shift in approach. Bono has admitted, in his own book, that the idea for the change in approach was his, and that all blame should be on him.
TinKnight
Refugee
I had a friend who was not a U2 fan and I distinctly remember during the Super Bowl
"Did you see U2 is giving their song away for charity? That's pretty awesome."
and then however months later absolutely slagging them on Twitter.
"Did you see U2 is giving their song away for charity? That's pretty awesome."
and then however months later absolutely slagging them on Twitter.
yes - because it was never about "free" and always about the delivery method.
2861U2
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
"I had this beautiful idea and we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing. A drop of megalomania. A touch of generosity. A dash of self-promotion. And deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard. There's a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves." - Bono
it was an idea built with good intentions that was executed horribly.
all they had to do was keep it the same way they did Invisible... free, but you have to go get it. the fans obviously would eat it up, and they'd get some people who just wanted to give it a try because hey, why not, it's free.
pushing it into everyone's libraries was the fatal flaw.
all they had to do was keep it the same way they did Invisible... free, but you have to go get it. the fans obviously would eat it up, and they'd get some people who just wanted to give it a try because hey, why not, it's free.
pushing it into everyone's libraries was the fatal flaw.
Despite that passage from his book, it is still fairly clear that U2’s intention was for it to be available for everyone with an iTunes account to reach out and download it. Bono’s reference to people waking up to find Bono in their kitchen drinking their coffee, etc is just him referring to the reality of what actually happened. They were not aware of the automatic download issue, and the **** storm that would ensue. That is all on Apple. There is nowhere that anyone said to them in advance that there is this technical issue (affecting a very small percentage of iTunes users) that would blow up in their face. Not long after the release Apple stated that the issue affected less than 250k accounts, out of about 70-80 million downloads of the album. Being unable to delete it, even if you chose to download it, also didn’t help matters.
Undoubtedly the whole SOI release was in retrospect a disaster. But it is not correct to state that U2/Bono knew of the automatic download issue and the problems it would bring.
Undoubtedly the whole SOI release was in retrospect a disaster. But it is not correct to state that U2/Bono knew of the automatic download issue and the problems it would bring.
The John Tree
Refugee
Personally, I think the iPhone thing was an obvious blunder - I don't think anyone's debating that - but I think this forum in particular really overlooks just how *uncool* U2 had become by that point.
It's really been since 2004. HTDAAB was obviously a hit, but not among younger people. Soccer moms and C Suite Executives might have found Vertigo to be a smash hit, but to anyone younger and more 'with it,' it just sounded like a really watered down attempt at being The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Hives, or any of the 'garage rock revival' bands that were already beginning to phase out by late 2004.
U2's comeback in 2000 was celebrated, but there was a culture shift by 2004 to something far more cynical, and Bono was already an easy punching bag: the millionaire rock star, up his own ass, shaming us into saving Africa. It happened quickly, but U2 turned very uncool very quickly.
Ten years later, they never really moved past that. It's wild to me that bands like Creed and Limp Bizkit, the old punching bags, are undergoing a sort of unironic comeback in the public consciousness, but U2 isn't.
The point is: it wasn't just anyone who uploaded their songs onto your phone. It was the most uncool band on the planet.
It's really been since 2004. HTDAAB was obviously a hit, but not among younger people. Soccer moms and C Suite Executives might have found Vertigo to be a smash hit, but to anyone younger and more 'with it,' it just sounded like a really watered down attempt at being The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Hives, or any of the 'garage rock revival' bands that were already beginning to phase out by late 2004.
U2's comeback in 2000 was celebrated, but there was a culture shift by 2004 to something far more cynical, and Bono was already an easy punching bag: the millionaire rock star, up his own ass, shaming us into saving Africa. It happened quickly, but U2 turned very uncool very quickly.
Ten years later, they never really moved past that. It's wild to me that bands like Creed and Limp Bizkit, the old punching bags, are undergoing a sort of unironic comeback in the public consciousness, but U2 isn't.
The point is: it wasn't just anyone who uploaded their songs onto your phone. It was the most uncool band on the planet.
he literally says it was supposed to go to everyone - so that they DIDN'T have to reach out and grab it.
and there was not a technical issue. auto download for your personal library was a feature of iTunes, not a bug. the inability to delete items in your personal library makes sense when you're tying to prevent people from accidentally deleting things they purchased.
OP
OP
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
I just find it bizarre that some people still feel the motivation to defend it. It was ****ed, but they acknowledged it, it was fixed (mostly), and it triggered much-needed public discourse about privacy and reading terms of service.
If Bono admits it was a mistake, why are there still U2 fans who will find any technicality to say it wasn’t?
If Bono admits it was a mistake, why are there still U2 fans who will find any technicality to say it wasn’t?
To be fair, at the time, Bono was saying something entirely different to what he would later write in his book. So it's understandable that some are wary of the latter day statement, especially considering Bono's own history of revisionism about the band and its antics.
U2 say their free album was 'a bottle of milk in people's fridge that they weren't asking for'
OP
OP
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
“Kind of an accident” “supposed to be in the cloud” “got out of hand”. Is this revisionism? I think he’s probably not wanting to explicitly admit the gravity of his complicity so soon after the events here, but this concords with the book story. It spiralled, he got excited and was the catalyst for that, and that cloud to download “plan” probably changed before the release rather than being an unexpected consequence after the fact. I think he’s being selective with the truth here, but his story hasn’t changed, it just got more honest.
phanan
Blue Crack Addict
There was a really good release to be had with SOI and they unfortunately screwed everything up with it.
Releasing Invisible on its own and not utilizing it as the first single for the new album given the reaction it had. If the album wasn't ready they should have waited until the following year's Super Bowl.
Not including The Crystal Ballroom.
The Apple debacle.
Abandoning Danger Mouse too quickly.
Honestly one of the biggest missed opportunities of their entire career.
Releasing Invisible on its own and not utilizing it as the first single for the new album given the reaction it had. If the album wasn't ready they should have waited until the following year's Super Bowl.
Not including The Crystal Ballroom.
The Apple debacle.
Abandoning Danger Mouse too quickly.
Honestly one of the biggest missed opportunities of their entire career.
2861U2
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Definitely a shame Invisible didn’t become something bigger. I still think it’s their best song post-COBL.
And it’s a crime it didn’t make the album somehow. I can’t think of a non-album song that fits more perfectly on an album than Invisible does on SOI.
And it’s a crime it didn’t make the album somehow. I can’t think of a non-album song that fits more perfectly on an album than Invisible does on SOI.
Pretty much this. The album should have been released around late 2013/2014. Then they screwed it up massively in hiring Tedder to rewrite generic MOR choruses and dilute the album into mainstream mediocrity.
The Edge spoke about delaying it for a year saying they needed to work on it more because the 'big music' wasn't there. It flippin' well was - they had two strong 'big music' songs in Invisible and Ordinary Love that could/should have ended up on the album. That would have been enough already and they undoubtedly performed better than anything off SOI. Meanwhile, the songs that were purely Danger Mouse driven on SOI are arguably the best on SOI. Release the album as it was in late 2013 with those songs (including Crystal Ballroom), and with the option to download it for free, then they'd have had a successful album campaign.
There wasn't any need to do any more work, and similar to No Line being overcooked, they royally butchered their best efforts into something that ended up being a mere much of a muchness.
Seems like they got caught up in the pursuit of an Oscar and just let Invisible languish. Terrible decision. And I think they know it, too.
They’re Dumb.
They must enjoy beating the spark out of the music.
The book convinces me he wanted it put into everyone's libraries, sure, but there's still a long way between that and him understanding the technological nooks/crannies of iTunes and what that would entail for people who didn't welcome the album. The fact that he went out of his way to say there'd be "a choice whether they want to listen to it" and nowhere in the conversation (that we've been made aware of) is Cook explaining the potential pitfalls with Bono saying "Do it anyway." heavily implies this to me. We can debate whether Apple's technology itself was flawed or not, but flawed for this particular use-case? Absolutely!
I'll even go a step further to say this could have happened to any artist, because nobody would have thought of those pitfalls in advance unless someone at Apple explained it and it sounds very much the case where the artist said "I don't care how you do it, just get it to everyone". Yeah, there's a guilt of ignorance there, but again I see nothing here that indicates he knew about the auto-sync stuff, inability to delete, etc. that was at the heart of the issue.
TinKnight
Refugee
we're still talking about apple, I just willingly put on Your Song Saved My Life, this band has never been in a worse spot.
Earnie Shavers
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
I thought so highly of Songs of Innocence that I haven't actually listened to Songs of Experience. At least, not in it's entirety. I've probably heard a track or two in full and skimmed one or two others but that's it. If you told me anywhere between 1990 and 2010 that there would ever be a U2 album that I simply wouldn't bother with, I would have thought that's batshit crazy, couldn't possibly be true. But Bomb to No Line to Innocence and everything in between, I was very comfortably completely removed from any 'contemporary' U2 interest by the time Experience came out. Just assumed it was **** and didn't bother at all.
The John Tree
Refugee
I personally really like Invisible, but I don’t think the chorus was ever going to make it a smash hit. It’s one for the fans, not the world.
As for SOI, it’s better than SOE and NLOTH, but still missing something that I can’t put my finger on.
That said, “Raised By Wolves” kicks ass. Perhaps one of their most overlooked songs. I love that one.
As for SOI, it’s better than SOE and NLOTH, but still missing something that I can’t put my finger on.
That said, “Raised By Wolves” kicks ass. Perhaps one of their most overlooked songs. I love that one.
OP
OP
dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
As someone who works with major technology releases to the public - the idea that a company like Apple either didn’t understand, explain or robustly test this scenario is a non-starter. Apple paid millions for this, and they all knew what would happen. It isn’t possible that they didn’t get into a sandpit environment and test the consequences of the action. Everyone involved made conscious decisions and there is no chance they didn’t know the way it would work.
This process breaks down when techies listen to people with ideas and don’t consider user behaviours, needs, preferences etc. So while everyone HAD to know the consequences of the decision, no one understood (or cared) about the social impacts, user reactions etc. they either didn’t have a good change manager, or they didn’t listen to them (and as one, I’d bet on the latter).
Good.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
I know Bono wants an Oscar, and it's too bad that they've been up against arguably the two best movie songs of the 21st century both times ("Lose Yourself" and "Let it Go").
"Hands" is a useless dirge, but OL is high quality and would have won in other years.
Maybe not against "Skyfall" but, you know, it's better than most Oscar songs.
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