Saying his band got "carried away," singer Bono apologized Tuesday for forcing U2's new album onto everyone with an Apple iTunes account.
At Apple's big event last month announcing the iPhone 6, Bono and Apple CEO Tim Cook stumbled through an awkward script announcing that everyone with an iTunes account would automatically have "Songs of Innocence" placed into their music libraries for free. Naturally, the compulsory download was met with an outcry.
"Oops," Bono said during a Q&A session posted to Facebook. A user had written the band, asking a question that was really more of a demand.
"Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people’s playlists ever again? It’s really rude," the fan wrote.
"I'm sorry about that," said Bono, blaming his ego, the media landscape, etc.
"I had this beautiful idea and we got carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing: a 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."
Bono had previously been confronted about the attempt at forced listening
by Rolling Stone. He did not apologize at the time, but did point iTunes users to a link containing instructions on how to remove the album.
"If you don't want it, delete it. Here's the link."
Apple, likewise, was also forced to share the deletion link almost immediately after the album was shoehorned into millions of people's music libraries.
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