“Being angry about an album you were given for free does sound dumb, but due to the way iTunes purchase libraries work, that’s not the whole story,” Marco Arment blogs for Marco.org. “As far as most people can tell, purchases stick around forever. I didn’t even know you could hide purchases from your history until this, and I’m supposed to be an expert in Apple stuff.”
“The right way for Apple to do a big U2 promotional deal like this would have been to simply make the album free on the iTunes Store for a while and promote the hell out of that,” Arment blogs. “The damage here isn’t that a bunch of people need to figure out how to delete an album1 that they got for free and are now whining about. It’s that Apple did something inconsiderate, tone-deaf, and kinda creepy for the sake of a relatively unimportant marketing campaign, and they seemingly didn’t think it would be a problem.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We maintain this is overblown. FWPOS. Apple will learn from this, likely never execute a promotion in such a manner ever again, and nobody outside of overwrought media types and thankful U2 fans will remember this in three weeks.
Related articles:
Apple creates tool for removing free U2 album from iTunes library – September 15, 2014
Apple iTunes users download 2 million copies of new U2 album; 17 other U2 albums in iTunes top 100 chart – September 12, 2014
Apple’s new TV spot “Echoes” featuring U2, iTunes and iPhone 6 goes into heavy rotation – September 11, 2014
Some iTunes users upset over Apple’s U2 album giveaway – September 11, 2014
Apple and U2 release ‘Songs of Innocence’ exclusively for iTunes Store customers – September 9, 2014