Bono spilled the beans on the internal discussions that led to two of the band's high-profile collaborations in his new memoir. The first saw the band star in an iPod ad, while the second involved Apple pushing the band's album into the hands of everyone with an iTunes account. The extracts from the anecdotes are in Bono's upcoming book, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.
The band met with Apple CEO Steve Jobs in October 2004 to pitch its upcoming song "Vertigo" as the soundtrack to one of the ipod's silhouette commercials. With Jobs unwilling to pay in Apple stock, and the band refusing to accept a traditional fee for its appearance, Bono suggested that Apple make a limited- edition U2 themed iPod as payment.
The suggestion did work. Apple produced a number of special edition U2 iPods between 2004 and 2006 after the band starred in the famous ad. The versions of the 4th and 5th generation iPods were black with red scroll wheels.
The second Apple collaboration of the band was much more controversial and involved pushing its new album to over 500 million people. The CEO of Apple was unwilling to distribute the band's album as the company was not a subscription organization.
Cook agreed to put the album in the account of everyone. The album wasn't great, people hated it, Bono apologized, and Apple released a tool to allow people to uninstall it. Today is arguably more of a subscription organization than ever before, as evidenced by the Apple Music announcement less than a year ago.
Bono said he should be blamed for the backlash because of his manager, Guy Oseary.
I take full responsibility. Not Guy O, not Edge, not Adam, not Larry, not Tim Cook, not Eddy Cue. I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it. Not quite. As one social media wisecracker put it, “Woke up this morning to find Bono in my kitchen, drinking my coffee, wearing my dressing gown, reading my paper.” Or, less kind, “The free U2 album is overpriced.” Mea culpa.
The excerpts from Bono's memoir can be found on The Guardian.
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