- This is better than U2’s new album.
The backlash around U2’s 13th album continues in the week since Apple slipped Songs of Innocence into roughly 500 million iTunes’ users libraries free of charge. New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones said the band shouldn’t “shove your music into people’s homes”; the Washington Post‘s Chris Richards called it “rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail”; Odd Future leader Tyler, the Creator said finding the album on his iPhone was, “Like waking up with pimples or herpes.” A couple days ago Apple introduced a tool specifically designed to remove Songs of Innocence from users’ iTunes accounts. And yet according to the Telegraph Apple issued a statement today saying 33 million people downloaded, streamed, or listened to the album on iTunes radio, which means that roughly six percent of people who had access to U2’s new work bothered to give it a try. That’s a small fraction, but still nothing to scoff at.
