If they’d just made the album free for anyone to download it would have been fine, instead they forced it on everyone
"if we just made this opt-in" has become the bleakest nonsense in IT.
Be it LLMs or ads or "free" albums, tech companies just can't accept that "make me say yes" should always be the default.
In this case it wasn’t even opt-out. Once the album was on your device it was impossible to get rid of it.
I felt the same for Steam years ago. If you got a free game or something and it was shit you couldn't take if off your list. Granted they didn't force the game onto you but you still should be able to remove games from your account. I know you can now but there was a time you couldn't.
it was quite a funny hobby to gift your friends shitty games, though
My friend said he has a small monthly budget for gifting a few of his friends porn games.
Maybe not anymore, this was a while ago.
But then line wouldn’t go up so obviously that’s wrong
I was there and I went from not knowing anything about U2 to absolutely hating it all.
Until I expanded my music tastes, I only had rap and hip-hop in my playlist. And suddenly this Bono guy just shows up? 🤬
I was there
I was an applecare employee at that time, just imagine..
The article keeps reiterating the viewpoint that not selling art devalues it. That's not necessarily wrong, but it's such a corporate take on the situation, and completely misses the actual issue people had with this. Corporations should not be using their ability to control our personal devices. It's a violation of trust, and that's what people were reacting to.
And further, I think it also completely ignores what is truly devaluing art: allowing executives huge cuts of the profit. They don't do sufficient work to justify the amount they take from the industry, but if they let bands have the money, they'd lose the control that lets them keep it.
There's not many places I feel safe saying this, but I'm going to go ahead and say it here. I don't really like U2s music. There I said it. I genuinely don't understand their massive popularity.
I was a big fan growing up. Really liked Achtung Baby and of course Joshua Tree is a great album. I even liked Zooropa and Pop. Went to see them live in the 2000s but by then the shine was wearing off; I was getting older and being a fan of things wasn’t as important to my identity anymore. But I was curious recently, so I looked up when their partnership with Apple started… Yeah, it was exactly the time I stopped liking them as much. It was both validating and depressing to make that connection. I’d always nodded along when people talked about bands selling out, but U2 was my band and they weren’t supposed to do that! Now I feel like they’re the poster child of selling out.
It didn’t help Songs of Innocence was one of their worst albums.
I’m still surprised so many people had such a strong opinion. Though honestly it’s probably a “vocal minority” moment. I know myself and quite a few other people I talked to were “oh cool, free album”
U2 is such a groundbreaking band. They’re the first band who managed to make an album with negative value.
Then one day Lyft (US ride sharing app) rolled out Lyft Bieber and I uninstalled immediately
...Lyft Bieber?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
