In an interview round that was documented for Facebook, members of the U2 band answered questions from their fans. Some of these questions included asking about the group's favorite performances and the reasons why Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen have names that are not as cool as Bono and The Edge.
One of the questions was directly addressed to Bono: "Can you please never release an album on iTunes that automatically downloads to people's playlists ever again," reads U2 bass player Adam Clayton. "It's really rude."
The question sender was identified as Harriet Madeline Jobson.
David Evans, the group's lead guitarist also known as The Edge, reacted to the question in fits of laughter. Bono responded to the question with a humbled heart.
"Oops. I'm sorry about that," says Bono. "I had this beautiful idea -- might have got carried away with it ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing. A drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs that we'd poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard."
Bono concluded his reply by saying that the world must have a lot of noise in it and that the group had been a little noisy themselves.
The Q&A session, which lasted for almost an hour, showed that the band also has a human side. Recently, the group had graced the iPhone and Apple Watch event of Apple after a successful negotiation with Apple CEO Tim Cook. The band announced that they will be giving copies of their latest album Songs of Innocence to all iTunes users as a special treat. Apparently, U2 received millions of dollars from the collaboration with Apple on the album's exclusive release on iTunes.
Apart from iTunes, the latest album of U2 is also available through the other music services of Apple, such as Beats and iTunes Radio. It had already reached 500 million people, 26 million of whom have downloaded it to their Apple devices. Users who were unhappy to see the album's existence on their phones without their permission are advised by Apple to visit the company's dedicated site. It allows users to delete the unwanted album from their iTunes library and from the purchases list.
If the users wanted the album back, after realizing that losing something that was sent to them as a free gift is not bad after all, they would need to re-download it. The album Songs of Innocence was available in iTunes as a free download until Oct. 13.
