Last week Apple unveiled its new phone, payment service, and smartwatch. In addition to those three products Apple also did something despicable. When I opened the Music app on my iPhone to listen to songs from my carefully curated list of awesome fucking music I noticed something. That something stunk up my music list like a dead bloated corpse floating down an otherwise pristine river. That thing was U2’s Songs of Innocence album. Fortunately I disabled automatic downloads on my devices so what was stinking up my music list was just a link to download the album, not the actual songs themselves. But the damage was done. My phone was violated. Even though I attempted to console my phone with a continuous stream of Iron Maiden and Manowar I could tell that it wasn’t helping.
I knew that the only way to help my phone overcome this traumatic experience was to completely remove Songs of Innocence from it. As it turned out removing that piece of shit wasn’t doable. The best I could do was go into my Music app settings and turn off the Show All Songs option. But sweeping something under the rug isn’t the same as getting rid of it. The corpse may have been under the floorboards but the stench still crept into the room.
I wasn’t the only one made unhappy by Apple foisting shitty music from a shitty band onto my device (U2 is shitty, if you disagree then you’re wrong). A lot of people, many of my friends included, were upset to see that their devices had been violated. They too sought a way to purge the memory of U2 from their devices only to find out that no such way existed. Thankfully, not even a week after the announcement, Apple has finally created a way for its customers to completely purge Songs of Innocence from their iCloud account:
The US tech firm is now providing a one-click removal button.
“Some customers asked for the ability to delete ‘Songs of Innocence’ from their library, so we set up itunes.com/soi-remove to let them easily do so. Any customer that needs additional help should contact AppleCare,” spokesman Adam Howorth told the BBC.
Users who remove the album and do not download it again before 13 October will be charged for the 11 tracks if they subsequently try to add them again.
So if you have iTunes or an iOS device and hate shitty music feel free to click the link, log into your iTunes account, and have Songs of Innocence sent to the sewer where it belongs.
In the off chance that somebody from Apple is reading this I have a message for you: don’t ever let this happen again. If you want to give your customers’ something just give them credit to download whatever album they desire.
I won’t bother to delete the album. It’s so bland and bad it doesn’t inspire action. I went on a long walk yesterday looking forward to listening to U2s back to roots effort. I listened to about 40 seconds of three or four songs and realized that this is the worst album I’ve ever heard. Just dreadful. How sad.