“Historical”, My Achtung Ass ⇥ apple.com

Remember ABC’s use of the word “historical” to tease Apple’s keynote? Remember how I got suckered into this, but also reminded you that the last time Apple hyped something to this extent it was the Beatles on iTunes?

Should have seen the U2 thing coming:

“U2 has been an important part of Apple’s history in music and we’re thrilled to make ‘Songs of Innocence’ the largest album release ever,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “We get to share our love of music today by gifting this great new album to over half a billion iTunes customers around the world.”

That’s why ABC called it “historical”, and likely not without some prodding.

Gotta wonder if this has a similar arrangement to Samsung’s giveaway of Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, too. Samsung, if you recall, bought a million copies of the album, thereby qualifying it for top 40 charts. Did Apple “buy” 500 million copies of Songs of Innocence? While we’re at it, is U2, as Mitch Bartlett so eloquently put it, a band or a business?

Sure, it’s “historical” for 500 million people to own a single album all at the same time. But there’s a huge difference between 500 million people buying an album and 500 million people being given an album. We buy albums we like or might potentially like, from artists that we already know or look interesting. I wasn’t planning on buying this record, yet I now own it. That’s weird, and not in a “pleasant surprise” kinda way.

It’s not like when Radiohead released In Rainbows, or Saul Williams released “Niggy Tardust”, or Nine Inch Nails released “The Slip” for as much as you want to pay — even free. They didn’t push it to my phone or your iPad. As a result, they felt less like marketing ploys and more experimental and genuine. And, as a result of that, I have purchased all three albums, and I suspect many others have done the same.

As for the U2 album itself, it’s pretty typical U2. Once you’ve heard anything from All That You Can’t Leave Behind onward, you’ve heard everything they’ve done in that time period. They call this record “very personal“, but they also said that about their previous effort. It’s not bad so much as consistently uninteresting.