U2 album on iTunes followup

[annathepiper]

For those of you who, like me, were startled to have an unwanted U2 album show up in your account library on iTunes, Apple apparently has received a lot of flak for this. Because the BBC is now reporting that they’ve released a tool to remove it.

I’ve just tried it and can confirm that it removed the album from my list of hidden purchases, so the tool does appear to do the trick. If you want to completely nuke the album out of your library, go to the link mentioned in the BBC article and follow its instructions.

I hope now that this will be a lesson unto Apple about not messing with user data like that in the future. And hopefully next time they want to do a massive promotional giveaway like that, they’ll actually, y’know, tell people. As I said before, if a massively famous band like U2 wants to give their album away for free, more power to ‘em, but they need to make sure that recipients actually know it’s going to come to them BEFORE it shows up in their libraries, and they should make sure the recipients actually WANT it.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[vatine]

In my (possibly extremely naïve) opinion, the thing to do for a free promotion is to, you know, allow the item to be "purchased" at no cost, for either a while or forever. Possibly bolstered by suitable advertising. Because that way, those who want it will go "oh! free <thing>!" and those who don't will go "oh, don't care about that".

And everyone is no less happy (and some much more so) than before everything started.

[annathepiper]

Yep, exactly.

I'm given to understand that the album will remain free until 10/13, at which point if you want it, you'll have to buy it. Which is fine.

Though I'm quite perplexed at the LACK of advertising. I know I get regular marketing mail from Apple, though I'm PRETTY sure I didn't get anything that said "HEY LOOK FREE ALBUM". I would have thought they'd have talked that right the hell up.