Apple Launches Site for Users to Delete U2 Album

Last week, U2 released their new album, Songs of Innocence, free to 500 million iTunes subscribers in 119 countries. Users with the “automatic downloads” feature turned on automatically got the album downloaded to their devices. This campaign, however, was not well received by everyone. Many see it as a violation of privacy, while others regard it as an experience of a U2 album. While it is nothing more than a bonus offered up by Apple and the Irish band, its presence in the users’ collections means that if you’re streaming from your cloud-based iTunes purchases, it’s bound to come up sooner or later. In an interview with Mashable, the band’s manager Guy Oseary stated, “It’s a gift from Apple. If someone doesn’t like the gift, they should delete it.” Bono sent a letter to the fans, writing “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.”

Apple has now reacted to the criticism and launched a site that shows iTunes users how to remove U2’s new album from their libraries and shared this dedicated link. The site says:

If you would like U2’s Songs of Innocence removed from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases, you can choose to have it removed. Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to redownload as a previous purchase. If you later decide you want the album, you will need to get it again. The album is free to everyone until October 13, 2014 and will be available for purchase after that date.