Former U2 manager Paul McGuinness says the band’s decision to give away its album Songs of Innocence on Apple’s iTunes store was a mistake.
The album’s release was a joint venture between U2 and Apple that backfired when the album landed on the devices of people who were not fans of the band.
“I think it was positioned wrongly,” said McGuinness. “If they’d made it ‘tick this box and you can receive the U2 album’, it would not have given offence. People were unhappy about having something arrive that they hadn’t asked for. It was easy enough to delete… But I think that it should have been handled differently.”
The album was delivered to 500 millions iTunes users, and Bono later apologised and admitted the move had not gone down well.
U2’s frontman said the band had got “carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing. Drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, 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 to get through it.”
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