If you were wondering how much it cost Apple to give away a copy of U2’s Songs of Innocence album to every customer, the answer, according the the New York Times, is more than $100M.
To release U2’s album free, Apple paid the band and Universal an unspecified fee as a blanket royalty and committed to a marketing campaign for the band worth up to $100 million, according to several people briefed on the deal. That marketing will include a global television campaign, the first piece of which was a commercial that was shown during the event.
Yep, that album that ended up on many people’s iPhones uninvited cost Apple whatever the royalty fee is for half a billion downloads plus a further $100M spend on marketing it. Nice. Perhaps the band will be donating a portion of it to Project RED?
Bono and Cook joked around about the cost during the keynote, with Bono telling Cook “you would have to pay for it, because we’re not going in for the free music around here.”
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What a waste.
I was thinking the same thing, it just shows that you can never please people, you give away an entire album from one of the most successful bands of all time and they still found a way to whine about it, amazing.
I was thinking the same thing, it just shows that you can never please people, you give away an entire album from one of the most successful bands of all time and they still found a way to whine about it, amazing.
What amazes me, is how much people are whining over getting something free.. A 1st world issue.. So what if it showed up in your iCloud purchases.. don’t download the flipping thing.. delete it (hide it) from your purchases. durrrr.. silly really.
You can say the same about spam. Because that’s essentially what it is.
Make it free – by all means – but don’t force it onto me…
And the fact that Apple paid for it – I’d rather discount of that couple of euros on my iPhone instead, thank you very much.
The royalty per a person is probably close to nothing per a person, as a single listen on iTunes Radio isn’t much. The figure simply gets impressive when times by a few hundred million user accounts.
Certainly we aren’t talking a few euros a person here.
If you buy a Samsung you wont have to worry about it, they are not giving you anything free so you dont have to worry about spam music.
If the band is signed to a record label, in average, the band gets .94 per mp3 album sale, so Apple would only be cutting the price of the iPhone 6 by $1. Furthermore, of that .94, that’s for the entire band, plus their manager (20% cut), plus their lawyers and anyone else they have to pay. Bands rarely make much if anything from selling albums, whether they are mp3 sales or CD’s. They make almost all of their money from touring and merchandise sales, which is the bigger part of this deal for U2, Apple is paying $100 million to promote U2’s new tour. If you figure that Apple is paying U2 $1 for every album and they pushed it or made it available to 500 million users (I doubt Apple is paying for all 500 million iTunes users, they likely negotiated a discount). Even then, taxes have to be paid on the $500 million. Manager gets 20%, or $100 million, pre taxes. Lawyers and accountants who negotiated the deal get another $50 million. That leaves $350 million, pre taxes, and then split 4 ways to the band members. Each band member might get $30 million after taxes. And while that is a ton of money, and we would all be thrilled with it, a huge band like U2 can make more than that, per band member, from a successful world tour. So Apple heavily promoting the tour is as important or more to U2 then the album revenue. Bands also have to pay the graphic artists who design album covers and tour posters, plus photographers, etc. If they have a record contract the record company normally pays those costs up front and then deducts that from record sales. Lyle Lovett has said he sold over 4 million records and never made a penny. Some other bands have said the same thing, sold 1 million records or more and not make anything. The record companies make the money on album sales. I’m curious if U2 has a record company contract anymore of if they are on their own like some other big bands such as Pearl Jam.
Bono….is that you?
I was thinking the same thing, it just shows that you can never please people, you give away an entire album from one of the most successful bands of all time and they still found a way to whine about it, amazing.
I was thinking the same thing, it just shows that you can never please people, you give away an entire album from one of the most successful bands of all time and they still found a way to whine about it, amazing.
Excellent music. The last time I enjoyed listening to an entire album in one go was Demon Days. I highly recommend Raised By Wolves.
Never like a U2 song in 1 or 2 listens. But I know that in a week those songs just stick. There are songs in there that are playing in my head already. I know music has become so much about everything other than music. On its merit I love the new album. It could be the best U2 album of this century.
I liked the staged banter between Bono and Tim Cook: “O Zen Master of software and hardware, our music is the life blood that animates your machines” ( not the exact words, I know, but words to that effect) and Tim seeming to take on the challenge right there on stage.
Pure techno-drama. Tim Cook could likely pull off successfully the cameo advert that Bill Gates disastrously attempted with Seinfield a few years ago – he’s got that same geeky nerdish-ness but will have Apple’s Style Council to make it hip and genuinely funny.
Did not arrive on my 4S
It only gets downloaded automatically if you have ‘Download content purchased on other devices automatically’ switched on
I was thinking the same thing.
The very best art is forced on unwilling people.
Kind of like the portraits of Saddam hanging up all over Irag.
If you don’t want to see if just don’t look.
But in the case of the U2 spam, it’s put into an account that is assigned to individuals. It wasn’t a simple download from the Apple website. That would have been the way to go, IF Apple really cared about the consumer.
Ahhh. Get over yourself.
U2? LOL Would you say the same thing if it were a Justin Bieber albumn? He’s been quite successful (and I care for Bieber as much as I care for U2, not at all)
If it were justin bieber, I would see apple In court.
I enjoyed it, even though I tend to listen to more progressive rock bands
I guess the Bono-shaped ‘Artists’ icon isn’t going away anytime soon then?
Lol. He has been called iconic.
By himself.
A drop in the bucket for Apple.
Ebola would not be good enough for them.
“Wondering what it cost Apple to give away that U2 album to every customer?”
A million p1ssed-off customers.
And 499 million happy customers. Sounds about right.
The iHypocrites celebrity of sell-everybody stopped Thinking Different a long time ago. This is the same old self-infatuation of the ruling elite. “Would you like to see my garden” said King Louis. “Would you like to see my spaceship and glass doorways?” -same story, updated for modern times.
How can people be so clever, powerful and clueless simultaneously?
Imagine an automatic app download every thursday because of the App of the week! Never missing an app!
No one would use apple XD
People whinging about people whinging about this, and saying first world problems – If you don’t actually like U2, how is this different from spam? What else will they put into your account in the future? Should have been a get it for free if you want thing, but this is a marketing tactic and ploy/test IMO.
Be thankful for this great album, *****s