U2 and Apple force-fed an album to 500M iTunes accounts — then had to delete it off them

At an Apple product launch on September 9, 2014, U2's album Songs of Innocence was pushed automatically to every iTunes account — 500 million customers in 119 countries — at no cost. Tim Cook called it 'the largest album release of all time,' and Apple reportedly paid upwards of $100 million for the exclusive window and the marketing.

The giveaway misfired. Millions of users had an album they never asked for appear in their library, and the backlash was immediate: critics called it 'rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail' and 'spam with forced downloads,' and rival musicians objected that it devalued music. One annoyed owner wrote that Apple owed him a new iPhone because he had to 'purify this one with fire.'

Apple was forced to build a dedicated website so customers could delete the album. When Songs of Innocence was released commercially a month later, it sold 101,000 copies in North America and scored U2's lowest UK debut in 33 years — a record many attributed to the promotional stunt that had already given the music away.