Largest album launch

Backed by a promotional campaign from Apple valued at $100 million (£61.8 million), U2's (Ireland) Songs of Innocence was gifted to 500 million iTunes customers - seven per cent of the world's population - on 9 September 2014. Labelled as the "largest album release ever", it was reported one month later that 81 million iTunes customers in 119 countries had "experienced" U2's 13th studio album, with 26 million people downloading the set in its entirety. Apple press release (9 September 2014): "Apple, Universal Music Group and legendary rock band U2 today announced the release of the album Songs of Innocence, which Apple is gifting to iTunes Store customers around the world, making it the largest album release ever with over half a billion copies distributed... The album is free for iTunes Store account holders in 119 countries and is available exclusively on iTunes for the next five weeks... Songs of Innocence is also available to stream via iTunes Radio and will be available on Beats Music."

U2 frontman Bono (from the same Apple press release): "From the very beginning, U2 have always wanted our music to reach as many people as possible - the clue is in our name I suppose - so today is kind of mind-blowing to us. The most personal album we've written could be shared with half a billion people... by hitting send. If only songwriting was that easy. It's exciting and humbling to think that people who don't know U2 or listen to rock music for that matter might check us out."

iTunes' set-up page for Songs of Innocence: "A big moment in music history. And you're part of it. Never before have so many people owned one album, let alone on the day of its release."

Eddy Cue, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services, told Billboard magazine that 81 million customers had "experienced" tracks from the album, either through iTunes or streaming on iTunes Radio and Beats Music. "To help put this into perspective... 14 million customers had purchased music from U2 since the opening of the iTunes Store in 2003."

Billboard (9 October 2014): "The U2 deal sets a new milestone in how recorded music is distributed - and paid for. Not only did the band (and label Interscope, by association) net $100 million in free media exposure from Apple's global marketing campaign, Universal Music Group could have secured a $52 million [£32.1 million] payment for exclusive rights to the product, based on Billboard's estimates of standard label profit from 26 million album sales."

Vijith Assar, writing for Wired magazine, said: "The whole endeavour yearns desperately to be a landmark new innovation for the music industry, perhaps something along the lines of Radiohead's legitimately earth-moving In Rainbows, which was self-released with variable pricing in 2007 and remains the gold standard against which music industry innovation is measured. But this is not In Rainbows, and as such should instead be remembered primarily as a monumental blunder by the tech industry. The delivery mechanism amounts to nothing more than spam with forced downloads... Meaningful power has by now largely disappeared from the music industry; there's no other conceivable way for U2 or any other musician to get 500 million copies shipped on day one."

In the context of traditional sales, 26 million full-album downloads would place U2's Songs of Innocence among the world's Top 40 best-selling albums of all time, in joint 32nd place with Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time, but that's still well short of the estimated 60 million copies that Michael Jackson's Thriller has sold since its release in 1982.

On 15 September 2014, Apple issued a custom-coded deletion tool and an accompanying support document allowing iTunes customers to permanently remove Songs of Innocence from their iTunes library.

Songs of Innocence, U2's 13th studio album, featured the heavily promoted lead single "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)". The iTunes download made the album ineligible for sales charts (and consideration for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in 2015), but it was given a conventional worldwide release (with 10 additional tracks not available on iTunes) on 14 October 2014. The album peaked at No.9 in the USA and No.6 in the UK, but topped charts in a number of European countries.

When the album was released commercially, U2 frontman Bono apologized for getting "carried away" with the idea of a free, iTunes-only launch, an idea that was widely criticized by the music press, fellow musicians and many non-U2 fans concerned about the ownership of an album without consent and allowing music to be "devalued" (Paul Quirk from the Entertainment Retailers Association) by U2 in sending out "a message to everyone that music is free" (Keith Nelson, Buckcherry).

While free or unconventionally released albums are nothing new in the music industry - Radiohead's In Rainbows (2007) "pay what you want" model broke new ground, Jay Z's Magna Carter... Holy Grail (2013) was offered as an optional download to owners of Samsung mobile phones and Beyoncé released her self-titled "visual album" on iTunes without any promotion in December 2013 - never before has there been such a high-profile (and expensive) album launch, let alone one that didn't allow customers to "opt in" beforehand.