Giving away free things is always good, in fact I have witnessed people jump through some pretty bizarre hoops just for the slightest possibility of securing “free” swag. So you can imagine how mystified I was with the backlash over Apple’s release of U2s new album, "Songs of Innocence", to all iTunes users.
This spawned a series of responses from the Apple faithful, here are a couple examples:
Apple lets users who hate free stuff ditch U2 album
As a part of its big press announcement last week, Apple announced that every iTunes user would get U2’s new album for free. While some people were thrilled to have some new music in their account for free, others…weren’t so happy. People who don’t care for the Irish rock group took to Twitter to complain about the appearance of “Songs of Innocence” in their music library. Now, Apple has offered those people who don’t care for the album a way out.
Apple, U2 and looking a gift horse in the mouth
But the inordinate amount of actual anger directed at Apple and U2 over this is so disproportional to the actual event, I’ve started to wonder about the mental state of some of those complaining. It’s really been off the charts.
If you fall into that camp, let me speak very plainly: I have no sympathy for you. I have trouble thinking of a more self-indulgent, “first world problem” than saying “I hate this free new album I’ve been given.”
So we went from being kind of weird for not wanting the album, to being mentally unstable. Ok …ok. I was in reality ambivalent about the album, the gesture and the general response but then I happened upon this response from Mr. Ed Bott:
@getwired @TheRomit My library consists of my choices. Content that is added without my consent is an advertisement.
— Ed Bott (@edbott) September 11, 2014Exactly! Apple has now provided a link for iTunes users to remove the advert album, it does remain free until October 13th if you are actually interested.
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