In September 2014, U2 released their 13th studio album Songs of Innocence by launching it directly into the digital library of all iTunes users. The album was free to download, and was immediately available to more than 500 million people. It was, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “the largest album release of all time”.
But it also annoyed many music fans. “Yeah, OK, this might be the largest album release in history. It’s also rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail,” wrote Chris Richards in the Washington Post. Chris Wade in Slate agreed: “Apparently, consent and interest are no longer a requisite for owning an album, only corporate prerogative,” he wrote.
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