In 2014, Bono learned the hard way that being a rock icon doesn’t mean people want your music sent to them automatically when latest album by U2 was sent to everyone’s iTunes libraries.
When Songs of Innocence started showing up in iTunes libraries around the world, nobody was happy about the invasion of privacy, not even diehard U2 fans.
In his new memoir, though, Bono has offered an apology for the notorious incident. “I take full responsibility,” he insists in Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, an excerpt of which was published in The Guardian over the weekend.
“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.”
It turns out that even Apple CEO Tim Cook was hesitant about the stunt. “‘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,’” Bono recalls Cook saying to him.
“‘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?.” Bono also compared his idea to Netflix buying a film and giving it out to subscribers for free.
The Irish singer continued: “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 was the worst that could happen? It would be like junk mail.”
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It’s not the first time Bono has felt the need to apologise for the stunt, noting at the time that “I had this beautiful idea and we got carried away with ourselves.”
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story will not be provided unsolicited to people and will instead be available to buy from November 1st through proper channels. The memoir can be pre-ordered here.
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