Apple and U2 working on secret project to save the music industry

“As an article in the new issue of TIME reveals, Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr believe so strongly that artists should be compensated for their work that they have embarked on a secret project with Apple to try to make that happen, no easy task when free-to-access music is everywhere (no) thanks to piracy and legitimate websites such as YouTube,” Catherine Mayer reports for TIME Magazine.

“Bono tells TIME he hopes that a new digital music format in the works will prove so irresistibly exciting to music fans that it will tempt them again into buying music—whole albums as well as individual tracks,” Mayer reports. “The point isn’t just to help U2 but less well known artists and others in the industry who can’t make money, as U2 does, from live performance. ‘Songwriters aren’t touring people,’ says Bono. ‘Cole Porter wouldn’t have sold T-shirts. Cole Porter wasn’t coming to a stadium near you.'”

“There’s more music on the way, not just an acoustic version of Songs of Innocence and bonus tracks but also a whole new album and a world tour,” Mayer reports. “Plus there’s their not inconsequential plan to save the music industry, news that will doubtless draw more 140-character darts in their direction.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Note:

Behind the TIME subscriber paywall, Bono talks to TIME about the band’s plans for their next release: “We’re about 18 months away from it… I think Songs of Experience will be released in a new format. And I think it’s going to get very exciting for the music business… [it will be] an audiovisual interactive format for music that can’t be pirated and will bring back album artwork in the most powerful way, where you can play with the lyrics and get behind the songs when you’re sitting on the subway with your iPad or on these big flat screens. You can see photography like you’ve never seen it before.”

Apple isn’t quite as loquacious as U2’s front man; the company will say only that it “declined comment on future product plans.”

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]