Apple Backpedals On Free U2 Downloads And Offers Deletion Option

You've seen the ad all over NFL football broadcasts and on YouTube pre-roll commercials. It's the U2/Apple spot promoting the free download of their new record "Songs Of Innocence."

Now, it appears some recipients of the tracks don't feel it was an "Innocent" move. In reponse, less than a week after Apple placed the songs on iTunes, they have created a way to have the songs deleted from your device.

USA Today reports the album was automatically downloaded to 500 million iCloud accounts in 119 countries. The marketing blitz was created to draw attention to the launch of iPhone 6 and iWatch.

In response to the disgruntled users who saw it as an invasion of privacy, Apple set up a program on iTunes called soi-remove, allowing customers to delete the album in just one click.

The first single, which we are spinning on KRNA, is called "The Miracle Of Joey Ramone." I like it...has some pretty sweet fuzz guitar from The Edge - and the video teaser in the Apple commercial is cool. The record is getting praise from Rolling Stone, but Jann & Co. almost always dub anything produced by the Irish lads as utopian. Newsweek had harsher critisism about a band they feel is moving into it's twilight creatively.

I think there are far greater threats to your privacy than songs auto-downloading to your device. That said, if Fitty Cent's new CD arrived digitally to mine, I'd be upset too. Not as upset as I'll be this Christmas if Target gets breached again just after I buy my kids their holiday gifts.