1. People want pull, not push. By and large users of any platform hate to have info pushed to them. Yes, there are exceptions like email and text notifications, but by and large, we hate being shouted at, even if it’s being done electronically. A better strategy in this situation might have been to say, “Here’s the new U2 album. Take it if you want it.” While that wouldn’t have amounted to the same ability to say that it was the biggest album release of all time, it would have alleviated the feeling that people were getting an unwanted musical virus planted on their phone or computer.
2. Downloads are over. When the entire world (except Japan, which is still stuck in the CD world thanks to oppressive laws) is turning to streaming music wholeheartedly, why would Apple hold on to this vestige of the past by thinking that anyone wanted to download an album’s worth of files? Oh, that’s right, the company has this vested interest in downloads by virtue of the fact that the music side of iTunes is still a huge business that features a billion downloads a year. The fact of the matter though is that the company and band could have looked a lot hipper by providing a free 90 day Beats Music account that included a proprietary playlist of the album along, and used the iTunes downloads as a secondary offering.
3. The band isn’t as cool anymore. Let’s face it, they’re all in their 50s, and while they’ve done an admirable job staying relevant far beyond the life span of most artists, to a great number of younger people it’s just, “Who is U2 and why are they sending me their spam music files?” The fact that the song that’s featured in the ad (“The Miracle of Joey Ramone”) is about another dinosaur rocker (although well-deserving) doesn’t help the cause either. Read more on Forbes.
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1 comment:
About U2: I was a huge U2 fan around the time of The Joshua Tree, and through to Achtung Baby. After that the whole "anti-U2 ironic" thing that they with with Achtung Baby has just gone on to become a recurring gag for the past 20+ years. I watched the Apple/U2 announcement live (streaming) and found it to be an embarrassingly grotesque spectacle of big business and back-slapping. U2 is more of a business than a band now. I've listened to the album about 5 times and find it to be far less than the 5 stars that Rolling Stone gave it - Rolling Stone seems to be on board with some master plan here.
About Apple: I love Apple's products, but I think this was a big blunder for them. Instead of putting out a premium product that people are willing to pay a premium price for (pull), they reduced themselves to the level of handing out flyers on the street to a show you have zero interest in seeing (push). A few blocks further and you toss it in the trash, while walking over the multitude of flyers that others have just thrown on the ground.
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