Free Isn’t Enough
When U2 and Apple joined mega-forces last week to put Songs of Innocence in every iCloud (and potentially on every iDevice) in the world, the overwhelmingly negative reaction was both predictable and shocking. Predictable because U2 hasn’t made a great album since the first half of All That You Can’t Leave Behind — the second half of that record contains three or four of the worst U2 songs ever (Wild Honey, New York, Peace on Earth, guh). Shocking because, well, apparently even free stuff isn’t good enough for us anymore.
It’s an amazing moment. In the course of twenty years, we’ve gone from shelling out $15 for the deluxe double-CD to complaining about albums that magically show up on our phones for free. Along the way, we’ve swapped files online illegally and a few of us have begrudgingly conceded to pay $10/month for the ability to listen to basically ALL THE MUSIC EVER CREATED WHENEVER AND WHEREVER WE CHOOSE TO ENJOY IT (resulting in $.37 royalty checks for artists). Essentially, we’ve made music worthless. Not artistically worthless, but financially worthless. The content, the albums, the tracks — they have no fiscal value in our culture.
And that scares me to death. Given that I work in advertising and I see it happening all around us, it shouldn’t — but it does (and I’m not alone). We’ve been on this train for a while. The arrival of this moment was probably inevitable the day that Napster enabled the first download of a Dave Matthews Band bootleg. But… but… but…
But what happens now? Over the last couple years, we’ve become uncomfortably comfortable with the Freeness of Content. So what do we do when content, art, music, photos and Culture (with a capital C, yes) become less than free? It’s happening. Advertising agencies and media planners dole out incentive after incentive to get audiences to watch their videos and join their communities. The debacle of the U2 album may only be notable for its scale and its perceived invasion of holy ground — our phones.
But that invasion is only a perception. And a far less egregious one than many we tolerate every minute and every hour. A U2 album appeared in our iTunes libraries. We threw a collective fit. We called it an ad. We said we never opted in. We demanded a delete button (without taking two seconds to just swipe left and be done with it all). Maybe we should calm down for a second and remember that we brought this on ourselves. Our Instagram feeds are now littered with real ads. Not albums. Not works of art (we can save the “this album isn’t a work of art, it sucks” argument for another post). Just perfectly filtered images of sunsets and Big Macs brought to you by another super-brand. All because we refuse to pay for anything.
And maybe that’s the root of the backlash. To the younger slice of Apple’s fan base, U2 is just another big corporation begging for attention, another brand delivering “sponsored content.” As someone for whom U2 still remains one of the most artistically, socially and culturally important bands of the last thirty years, it kills me to think of it in those terms. And I wonder if the response would’ve been different if this had been a Katy Perry album or a greatest hits set from Jay-Z. Something tells me, though, that we still would’ve found reasons to complain. We’ve crossed the line. Free is no longer enough.
