14 DAY TRIAL // U2's lead singer, Bono, was interviewed over the weekend by Dave Fanning of the Irish radio 2FM. He went on talking about his beginnings with the band and their newest album, "Songs of Innocence."
But the 46-minute audio interview covers some of the hot topics of the moment, including the whole fiasco with iTunes forcing the album to every user and his views about the issues that have been presented by iTunes users around the world. He compares the bloggers with the people that used to write in the toilet walls.
"Technological blip"
He calls them haters, but he is happy his album got to be in front of millions, even people who would have never been exposed to their music. Bono blames a technological blip what happened with iTunes because the album didn't just stay into the cloud, but it was downloaded automatically to their phones. He believes Apple was not happy about that and that's why they've released the U2 removal tool.
Bono also jokingly admits that no one has deleted more U2 songs in the last five years than the members of the band. This is why it took them so long to release the new album.
The New Music
U2's front man admits he is working with Apple on a new type of music format and that is going to help increase music sales. He talks about ways to see pictures of the actual artists performing while you listen to their music on iPhone or iPad or see the mood of the artist when he wrote that musical piece. Another idea would be to have lyrics of a song appear on the screen and scroll together with the song.
This type of interactive album would only work on a device with a high-resolution screen, whether it is a Mac running iTunes, or an Apple TV or the iPhone and iPad. Bono recalls a conversation he had with Steve Jobs about five years ago, and he said to Steve "How is it that for a person who cares about the way things look and feel more than anyone else in the world that iTunes looks like a spreadsheet?"
Apparently, he worked on that with people from Apple and although it was not ready for a release together with "Songs of Innocence," it will be done for "Songs of Experience." Bono also said that there are 885 million iTunes accounts at the moment. His plan is to take that number to a billion.
U2's singer explained how he appreciates the music streaming business model and admits he is a big fan of Spotify.
Make sure to listen to the whole interview for yourself. It brings a fresh perspective on music and some of the things Apple is doing.