Since U2 stunned the music world by delivering a surprise album at Apple’s iPhone 6 unveiling and making it available to a half-billion iTunes users for free, they’ve gotten an avalanche of publicity.
But who’s listening to it? The answer is still unclear. Apple has not released official download rates for “Songs of Innocence” and U2’s manager, Guy Oseary, also said he didn’t know how many people had actually downloaded the album.
But that really wasn’t the point: The album will live on in users’ iCloud, and the band envisions new listeners accessing it for the first time for years to come.
“We’re quite happy that 7 percent of the planet has this album, and they can enjoy it at their leisure,” Oseary said.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers’ move was hotly debated within the industry as people tried to assess whether it was another stroke of genius from a band that has been a top-selling juggernaut for decades or a ploy by an aging group trying to make a splash in a landscape that has vastly changed since it released its last album in 2009. Even though that album went platinum, its sales were a bit of a disappointment for the band.