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Music Apple

Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album 323

Posted by timothy from the auf-wiedersehen-baby dept.
Ronin Developer writes Apple has listened to the complaints of those who object to having received a pushed copy of U2's latest album as part of their recent campaign. While nobody has been charged for the download, some objected to having it show up in their purchases and, in some cases, pushed down to their devices. While it is possible to remove the album from your iTunes library, it takes more steps than most would like to take. Apple has responded and released a tool to make it possible to remove the album from your iTunes library in a single step.
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Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album More

Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album

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  • Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:14AM (#47917599)
    I will not be satisfied until Apple provides a tool to remove Bono entirely.

    • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:20AM (#47917685)

      The most troubling aspects of this are:

      (a) Apple can push material onto your device without your knowledge or consent

      (2) It can be done in a way that is difficult to remove

      (iii) Bono

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        a) false. You had to have your device set to allow automatic pushes.
        2) Hardly new.
        III) That's irrelevant to what happened. You putting this here tells me the only reason you are upset is because it's a group you don't like.
        I know, I now, it's quite fashionable to hate a guy who spends a shit load of money helping people.

        • a) false. You had to have your device set to allow automatic pushes.
          2) Hardly new.
          III) That's irrelevant to what happened. You putting this here tells me the only reason you are upset is because it's a group you don't like.
          I know, I now, it's quite fashionable to hate a guy who spends a shit load of money helping people.

          Please listen .... what's that sound?

          WHOOSH!!

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

          a) false. You had to have your device set to allow automatic pushes.

          Which is, of course, the default.

          And, if I'm not mistaken, Apple defaults to downloading anything less than 100MB over cellular data. Which could be quite costly to people on more expensive data plans.

          III) That's irrelevant to what happened. You putting this here tells me the only reason you are upset is because it's a group you don't like.

          Well, yeah, it's U2. Their music is terrible. I'd be pretty pissed if I had U2 forced on me.

          Wait, "anyone who has an Apple account?" Crap. That does include me.

          • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Interesting)

            by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:56AM (#47918083) Homepage Journal

            U2 didn't used to be terrible, but at some point in the late 90s or early 2000s they seemed to start phoning it in. I haven't listened to anything new by them since then.

            I'm a pretty serious music junkie, and while I usually listen to progressive rock and jazz fusion, I liked U2's stuff starting in the late 80s and my wife brought me an appreciation for their earlier stuff. They were a talented bunch of guys who were never above reinventing themselves every couple albums, like a lot of good, creative groups. This was back in the days when a significant amount of popular music was interesting and creative.

            I'm surprised that Apple would be so tone-deaf to think everyone would automatically want this new album pushed to them. It wouldn't bother me (but I don't own any Apple devices and you couldn't pay me to use iTunes), but I can guarantee I'd want a very easy way to get rid of it if I didn't like it. I haven't spent decades curating a collection of music just to have it be carelessly junked up.

            • I have no idea what they sound like now, but I got tired of them in the late eighties, everything just started sounding so whiny.. almost emo. "Still can't find what I'm looking for", yadda..
              That said, I think highly of Bono, he seems a good dude, and doesn't let biases determine who he'll talk to or work with, and has done a tremendous amount of good.

            • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)

              by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @02:18PM (#47919783)

              This was back in the days when a significant amount of popular music was interesting and creative.

              Also known as the days when you were most likely a teenager or young adult.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

                I was a teenager in the 90s and most of it was shit.

                Around 1990 a major change happened where music was written before lyrics instead of the other way around. That made songs very hard to sing, if not impossible. The vocals often had to be sampled and sequenced because live performance was impossible. As someone who likes to sing that sucked.

                1990 was also when the loudness war went atomic. Bad times.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by phayes ( 202222 )

              I'm surprised that Apple would be so tone-deaf to think everyone would automatically want this new album pushed to them. It wouldn't bother me (but I don't own any Apple devices and you couldn't pay me to use iTunes), but I can guarantee I'd want a very easy way to get rid of it if I didn't like it. I haven't spent decades curating a collection of music just to have it be carelessly junked up.

              Fortunately, auto-downloading music is NOT the default configuration, and even for those that changed their configuration to autodownload it, removing the album is trivial: swipe each song to the left.

              So, clearly the problem isn't that the album was auto downloaded because it's sooo hard to prevent or get rid of.

              No, it's an opportunity for those who want to rag on U2 or Apple to do so & reading the comments of those to are posturing "outrage" shows that this is the case.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

                Why are you defending them? Technical people like us may understand all these issues but as far as the average Apple user is concerned this unwanted album turned up and now they have the hassle of removing it. Worse still there doesn't seem to be a way of blocking Apple from adding stuff to your music library in the future. Hopefully the outrage will stop them doing it again.

        • Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Insightful)

          by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:46AM (#47917963)

          it's quite fashionable to hate a guy who spends a shit load of money helping people.

          No, he spends a shitload of money promoting himself and boosting his own ego and sense of self-importance.

          That's selfish, not selfless. Big difference.

          • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)

            by rockout ( 1039072 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:01PM (#47918135)
            Apparently no one is allowed to spend a shit load of money helping people without having do-nothing assholes hate on them for it, usually by accusing them of self-promotion and ego boosting. At least be a little bit original.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by geekoid ( 135745 )

            I ma really tired of this shit.
            Rich person send his money and limited time on a charity the want supported.
            Suddenly they are bad people.

            I suspect your just jealous, but since you can't actually talk about making music, you just make up ad hom attacks about what he does with his money.

            • There are ways to do it without parading your "charitable attitude" in front of the world. "Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing," but in Bono's case, his right hand knows, and so do all of ours, whether we want to or not.

              So you'll just accuse me of being "jealous." If having his resources goes hand-n-hand with being such an arrogant ass, I have no reason to envy him.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            it's quite fashionable to hate a guy who spends a shit load of money helping people.

            No, he spends a shitload of money promoting himself and boosting his own ego and sense of self-importance.

            That's selfish, not selfless. Big difference.

            You dipshit.

            Whether you agree with his politics or not, Bono is downright serious about his charity work.

            Good for him.

            Just compare him to Jenny "vaccines cause autism" McCarthy or Rosie "fire can't melt steel" O'Donnell.

            Hell, if you want a celebrity that's full of himself? Boosting his own ego? Take Kanye West. Please.

          • No, he spends a shitload of money promoting himself and boosting his own ego and sense of self-importance

            How many Courics in a shitload?

        • The most troubling part here is that Apple thinks it can inject stuff into my curated libraries without asking. This is the end result of blending the player and the store.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          a) it comes along with sync.

          and it will go away in a month as I understood? the thing is though that they just used millions of peoples paid data to do their little stunt - AND they could have made it for free to _choose_ on itunes.

          but bono, that fuckhead, didn't want it free unless it was pushed to every device.

          and it'll count as wasted storage space too. there's a difference in putting it for free to sync if you want and synching it for you. that they needed to make a tool to get rid of it just tells tha

      • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Informative)

        by adamstew ( 909658 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:25AM (#47917731)

        They can not. The only people who had the album pushed to their device are those who turned on the flag on their devices to download new purchases. The only thing Apple did was flag that album as purchased for all iTunes accounts. The device then dutifully did as it was told by it's owner and downloaded all purchases.

        The album never showed up on my devices because I don't have that flag turned on.

        • I haven't bought music through iTunes yet, so I'm hardly an expert, but it seems to me that if I were to PURCHASE music through a DOWNLOAD service, I would want to "download new purchases". It seems, then, that this would be the normal and expected setting - unless perhaps one expects to purchase on cell data service and then download later on wifi? in which case it would seem the better solution would be an option in the service to only download big files while connected on wifi, but I know Apple doesn't

          • Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Informative)

            by adamstew ( 909658 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:36AM (#47917851)

            Apple does have that option as well. You can set a bit such that the phone will only download new purchases over wifi.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

              You can set a bit such that the phone will only download new purchases over wifi.

              And how many users do you think knew that they needed to do this prior to the album being released?

              The autodownload feature is only useful if you're completely within the Apple ecosystem and regularly buy songs from your iPad and want them to show up on your iPhone (or vice versa). If you either never download tracks off the music store or only download them on a single device (such as, say, someone who only owns the one iPhone), you'd never know that there even was an automatic download feature. (And if yo

              • The auto download feature isn't turned on by default. It's off by default. So you'd have to know of it's existence for it to be on.

              • So ....

                Apple gets nailed because it's a walled garden and the user is insulated from making choices.
                Apple gets nailed because they didn't give the user a choice.

                I suppose it sucks to be Apple.

                All the way to the bank.

        • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:00PM (#47918127)

          That's skirting around the issue - this wasn't a purchase, so it shouldn't have been distributed that way.

          • That is fair. I thought it was odd that they just "purchased" it for everybody rather than just make the price free for a month and people could go and claim it. I didn't bother me either way.

        • The only thing Apple did was flag that album as purchased for all iTunes accounts.

          Except that it wasn't purchased and flagging it as such doesn't make it so.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A tool to remove a tool... interesting concept.

    • I will not be satisfied until Apple provides a tool to remove Bono entirely.

      From the iTunes Store or from the world? PLEASE say it's the latter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Right now, Bono must be feeling about as bad as Gary Powers did back in 1960.

    • Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)

      by chinton ( 151403 ) <chinton001-slashdot@nospAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:46AM (#47917959) Journal

      I will not be satisfied until Apple provides a tool to remove Bono entirely.

      Would that be a tool removal tool?

    • I will not be satisfied until Apple provides a tool to remove Bono entirely.

      Given historic ties between Apple Inc. and the Pixar Animation Studios division of The Walt Disney Company through the Jobs estate, I find it unlikely that Apple would support repeal of the Bono Act [wikipedia.org].

    • I thought a ski slope took care of Sonny Bono a long time ago.

      It's Cher that still needs to be removed.

  • Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:18AM (#47917659) Journal

    It's nice Apple responded, but the outrage over this whole thing (especially for people who have already bought into the iTunes garden) seems way overblown.

    Some perspective might help. [imgur.com]

    • As someone who really detests sweatshops, on the grounds that a safe working environment should be a universal human right, please please stop calling it slavery.

      On the one side, it invites people who don't care about the problem to argue semantics, and on the other it makes a false equivalence to real actual slavery that still exists in the world(though is universally illegal).

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 )

        And I wish people would stop using the word "universally" when we even haven't reached another solar system yet.

      • On the one hand it would be wonderful if there were no sweatshops. On the other hand, they do provide a job for people. I remember a number of years ago Nike had a factory in Honduras (if I remember correctly). A bunch of privileged American college-age people went down there and raised such a fuss that Nike was forced to close the factory and relocate the work elsewhere. The smug Americans celebrated their mission accomplished and moved on to their next cause. Later someone went back to Honduras and follow

        • Right, and the existence of the unethical factories in the supply chain isn't the problem. It's the unsafe working conditions within those factories. Which is why the distinction against slavery is so important.

      • real actual slavery that still exists in the world

        As someone who demands precision, you should consider using real actual grammar that still exists in the world.

        • I make all sorts of grammatical errors all the time, but that isn't an example. That's called an "object phrase" and it's perfectly fine syntactically and semantically.

          Try reading it again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        People in sweatshops are often treated as property. Hence, slave.
        also:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]

        There are many methods of slavery.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]

        People aren't arguing semantics when they say it isn't slavery, they are just ignorant about slavery.

        • As long as we're talking specifically about Apple's factories through Foxconn haven't been alleged to have that problem. They've been noted for having awful, dangerous working conditions with low wages and frequent suicides.

          So you're conflating actual slavery, which I totally acknowledged exists, with what Foxconn is doing, which is differently problematic.

    • It's not overblown. People simply care more about the technology they bought than about whether some people are enslaved some thousand miles away. And you do to, so don't be a hypocrite.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        Yes, it is overblown. People got a free album. It was downloaded to device that were set to allow automatic downloads. End of story.

        You can be a hypocrite and still realize change needs to be made. When you are entrenched in a system, you can only change it from inside the system.

        • It IS overblown. But then again, so is pretty much everything around here.

          It IS important to render garments and gnash teeth over stuff like this. Else Apple (and others) will try this again. Besides, what else are we going to do here? Solve the major problems of the world?


    • I completely agree. In many ways it seems that people do not even know how to be outraged.

      So this link is really obligatory: http://thepessimist.com/2013/0... [thepessimist.com]

    • Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:55AM (#47918061) Journal
      No its not overblown. The issue at hand is that Apple thinks it can alter people's libraries at a whim. I dont WANT U2 in my collection at all. I have nothing against them, but i hate the fact that it was pushed into my face and into my library. I want my library to be composed of material I choose, not apple.

  • I must be broken (Score:5, Insightful)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `reglefb'> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:18AM (#47917665)

    It seems like the whole world enjoys being outraged by the pettiest bullshit (and indeed goes out of its way to FIND things the be outraged about) in a world full of very important concerns no one gives a shit about.

    • Well, let me start off by saying that although I do own an iPhone(4), I do not use it as a phone, and there is no sim card in it. I do not connect it to any wireless router, or anything else. Hell, I don't even carry it with me ever. I only use it for it's video capability. Originally I bought it because I thought it'd be a nice addition to my things.

      However, I think that everyone is mad because something automatically was added to a list of things that they purchased, maybe I'm wrong. They're mad,

  • U2 poured 5 years of their soul into this album (Score:3)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:19AM (#47917675)
    And Apple is allowing people to remove it after 5 days. A nice example of how internet time differs from human time.

  • First world problem solved (Score:4, Funny)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:20AM (#47917689)
    What else about Apple can we now whine about? Perhaps Tim Cook's recent TV interviews?

  • Unfortunately (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:24AM (#47917719) Homepage Journal
    The tool looks at the rest of your music collection while it's deleting the U2 album and judges you accordingly. "Oh, the Justin Beiber gets to stay but you're deleting the U2 album? OK I see how it is!"

  • link? (Score:2)

    by MagicM ( 85041 )

    I read TFA and couldn't find a link to the tool. I AM OUTRAGED!

  • Misleading links (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zerosomething ( 1353609 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:31AM (#47917799) Homepage
    Yet another /. article with links that don't actually give you any useful content. When you select the link in the text "tool to make it possible to remove the album from your iTunes library in a single step." wouldn't you expect to see an article about the tool and actually have a link to the tool? Oh no can't have that because you have to prop up what ever favorite news feed you are promoting.

  • Meanwhile.... (Score:3)

    by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 ) <mike&mikesmithfororegon,com> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:36AM (#47917843) Homepage
    I downloaded the album (Free U2? Okay!) and have listened to it a couple of times in the car. It's not bad. Not exactly world-shattering --- they haven't done world-shattering in 20 years --- but enjoyable.

  • It's a relationship argument about control. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DutchUncle ( 826473 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:41AM (#47917911)
    I don't have an iProduct that got force-downloaded. Today is my anniversary (a big number). So I don't see a first-world problem; I see a relationship problem.

    It's not about the album. It's about control. It's about changing the station in the car radio when someone else is driving. It's about putting up with his sports posters and her frilly pillowcases. It's about changing the address list so it's alphabetical by first name instead of last name, and rearranging the desktop to be organized horizontally instead of vertically.

    I feel your pain. But I can assure you that you can get through this.

    • It's not about the album. It's about control. It's about changing the station in the car radio when someone else is driving.

      No, it's about someone starting a U2 radio station that you don't have to tune into unless you want to, but now it's there if you want to hear it.

      I swear to God, if my kids whined as much as the Internet has about me giving them a copy of an album I like, I'd ground their ungrateful asses until their iPods decayed into lead.

  • Which one? (Score:5, Funny)

    by chinton ( 151403 ) <chinton001-slashdot@nospAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @11:49AM (#47917987) Journal
    You're going to need to be more specific about which "unwanted U2 album" you are talking about.
  • U2 are. Just saying.
    • It sounds more insightful in latin: ludit musica ergo sunt.

      Yes, U2 are. They exist. Descartes kinda beat you to the punch by a few centuries though.

      Also, I don't know latin.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Please, explain in what way there aren't talented?
      It's fine you don't like their music, but to say they don't have talent indicate you have some professional music creation detail they are doing wrong.
      Wrong notes? off timing?
      I look forward to a detail analysis of their work.

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rebelwarlock ( 1319465 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:13PM (#47918261)
    People acting like users have no right to complain about free shit need some perspective.

    For example, do you like tofu? No? Well tough shit, it's free, and I'm going to force feed you three pounds of it. You have no right to complain about free food. Hell, I'll opt for stinky tofu while I'm at it. Here in Taiwan, people love that shit. Everyone who doesn't thinks it smells and tastes like raw sewage.

    U2 is the stinky tofu of the music industry. You have people who like them, and people who can't imagine why you would find it necessary to inflict such pain upon yourself.

    • For example, do you like tofu? No? Well tough shit, it's free, and I'm going to force feed you three pounds of it.

      The correct analogy would be: do you like tofu? No? Well, here's a coupon for free tofu anyway. If you like it, pick it up at the store. If not, don't. Either way. Free tofu.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:15PM (#47918289)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Sorry..didn't have the link before.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ronin Developer ( 67677 ) on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:26PM (#47918397)
    Apple has now launched a tool to help disgruntled customers easily remove the album from their iTunes library.

    To remove the album, users need to:

    • Go to http://itunes.com/soi-remove [itunes.com]
    • Click Remove Album to confirm you'd like to remove the album from your account
    • Sign in with the Apple ID and password you use to buy from the iTunes Store

    Apple warned that, once the album has been removed from a user's account, it will no longer be available for them to redownload as a previous purchase. If they later decide they want the album, they will need to get it again.

    The album is free to everyone until 13 October 2014, and will be available for purchase after that date.

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