Apple has released a tool to allow its customers to remove U2’s album ‘Songs Of Innocence’ from their devices with just one click.
Some users had complained about the album being automatically downloaded onto their Apple products without their permission. Many account holders were not aware of how to delete the tracks.
The US tech giant has now responded by providing a button to remove the LP easily.
“Some customers asked for the ability to delete ‘Songs Of Innocence’ from their library, so we set up itunes.com/soi-remove to let them easily do so. Any customer that needs additional help should contact AppleCare,” Apple spokesman Adam Howorth told the BBC.
‘Songs Of Innocence’ was released without any prior announcement on Tuesday (September 9) at Apple’s iPhone 6 launch event and was immediately made available on iTunes with free digital copies delivered to over 500 million users. It is the band’s first album since 2009’s ‘No Line On The Horizon’ and was recorded with producers Danger Mouse, Flood, Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder.
“We wanted to make a very personal album,” Bono said after the the release. “Let’s try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. The whole album is first journeys – first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually. And that’s hard. But we went there.”
Acknowledging that not everyone would be keen on the album arriving automatically on their devices, Bono wrote on the band’s website: “Part of the DNA of this band has always been the desire to get our music to as many people as possible. In the next 24 hours, over a half a billion people are going to have ‘Songs Of Innocence’… should they choose to check it out. That is so exciting. People who haven’t heard our music, or weren’t remotely interested, might play us for the first time because we’re in their library… And for the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way… the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail.”
Bono added that Apple had bought the album as a “gift to give to all their music customers”. Reports have suggested that advertising and marketing provided by the tech firm could be as much as $100 million (£62 million).