U2 4 Free: Yay or Nay?

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My vote: Yay.

Good for Sharon Osbourne, who figured out a new way to capture 5 additional minutes of fame by bashing U2 and Apple for their “Songs of Innocence album for free” promotion on iTunes.

In answer to her question, according to the New York Times, Apple paid U2 $100 million for the right to give the album to iTunes customers for free:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/business/media/u2-appears-at-apple-event-and-songs-of-innocence-appears-free-on-itunes.html?_r=0

What’s so wrong with this?

U2 never made any claim that they weren’t getting paid, nor did Apple make any claim that they weren’t paying U2. The promotion was, quite simply, U2 4 Free on iTunes.

Wikipedia indicates that four months into its release, U2’s last album, No Line on the Horizon, sold 5 million copies.

At the time, The Guardian reported that Bono was “disappointed with latest album sales” and was quoted as saying, “The commercial challenges have to be confronted…in a sense, the more interesting challenge is, ‘what is rock’n’roll in this changing world?'”

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/26/u2-bono-disappointed-album-sales

And confront those challenges, they did.

Instead of four months and five million albums sold, in just one day, the reach of Songs of Innocence was to 500 million people.

This may be the driving force behind the true money maker in today’s music industry, the live performance. If U2 is planning a new world tour, is there a better model in existence for achieving maximum exposure in anticipation of this than going the route of an Apple promotion? Because quite frankly, $100 million is “peanuts” compared to the revenue potential of a tour. Also according to Wikipedia, the U2 360° Tour, from 2009-2011, was the highest grossing concert tour in history, with ticket sales over $736 million.

Where Osbourne seems to be thinking of this as a desperate play by a group that is past their prime, I see this as one of the greatest rock bands of all-time leading the way in showing today’s generation a formula for success. Certainly, not everyone will be paid by a company like Apple. But the point here is to embrace the idea of giving your music as much exposure as it can possibly achieve to gain popularity, and once achieved, to use that influence to support the live performance venue. Concerts have always been, and will always be, not only the true revenue provider for musicians, but also what separates the good bands from the truly great bands, who can sell out stadiums.

U2 has figured out a way to remain relevant with today’s generation, and for this, they should be commended, not condemned.

And I think it actually speaks to Apple that they did, in fact, pay a huge sum for the ability to give a gift to its paying customers. They would have sold just as many iPhones regardless of the U2 promotion. They didn’t need to do this to drive sales. This is a “thank you” gift they paid a lot of money for. It’s as simple as that.

Osbourne is so quick to make it seem like Apple is the music industry’s enemy, but in fact, Apple is the one place where a musician can achieve a maximum amount of exposure to the greatest number of listeners with a business model that can enable revenue to be earned.

Of course, none of this matters if a band doesn’t have the music to back themselves up, and isn’t that what truly matters to the 13 year old who picks up a guitar and starts playing in his garage for the first time. Is he concerned about revenue sharing? Or does he simply want to make his own great music, inspired by the classic bands he grew up with? How that translates into dollars and cents plays itself out later. For this boy in the garage, it’s the artistry that comes first.

Songs of Innocence is a fantastic album, the best U2 has put out in years, and is worthy of an exposure to 500 million listeners.

I downloaded it for free.

Thank you, Apple.

It’s great music.