U2’s Bono Shares Tim Cook Unwillingly Let Band Infiltrate Phones With Music

The year is 2014. You wake up, check your iPhone, maybe decide to put on some music while you make breakfast—and whose album should you find has been surreptitiously uploaded onto your iTunes overnight? U2’s.
 
It was an odd moment in pop-culture history as everyone came to find that they had all been ambushed with the same U2 album, Songs of Innocence. Since then, Bono has previously apologized for the event but listeners were never given a look into how it came about.
 
The band’s frontman has now come clean with an explanation and another apology for why fans were forced to listen to the group’s music. In his biography, with excerpts published in the Guardian, the singer asked that all blame be placed on him for insisting the album was downloaded onto phones without consent.

He had proposed to CEO Tim Cook that the company buy the album from the band and distribute it for free, the same way that Netflix licenses films. Cook bit back, saying Apple wasn’t like Netflix and didn’t have a subscription model—Apple Music was still in the works at the time—so why should this be done?
 
Bono said while they weren’t a subscription-based organization, he wanted the band to be a test trial for the company. Cook in turn suggested they should release it only to fans of the group, but the frontman wanted everyone to have the album and said it was their choice if they listened to it.
 
And listen to it they did… not.
 
The group and Apple came under fire for uploading music to people’s devices without permission. U2 was even subjected to memes about how people weren’t listening to the band anymore, so it was forcing others to do so. 

In response, Cook noted that despite the rollout’s failure, the company had to test new ways to deliver music as people were unhappy with the industry’s climate at that time. Lo and behold, the experiment paved the way for Apple Music later down the road.
 
This wasn’t the group’s first tie-in with Apple, either. Previously, U2 was the first act to be featured as a silhouette in the company’s iconic iPod commercials. It even released a special-edition black iPod with a red wheel, the first not to have a white wheel, which was approved by Jony Ive.
 
Bono also recounts working with Jobs and how he was unsure Apple would have the funds to promote the band. The singer insisted they only wanted a spot in the advertisement and some Apple shares. Jobs drew the line there, bluntly saying that would be a “dealbreaker.”
 
 
 
[via Engadget and AppleInsider, cover image via Apple]