What Did Tim Cook Say About the Free Album?

Tim Cook, when the idea was pitched, asked why anyone who spent a whole life getting people to pay for music would give something away free. After the then-new album landed in people's iTunes without asking, the giveaway turned into a debacle people were mad about, and the same objection came back.

Bono says the band was experimenting. They wanted Apple, or another company, to pay for the music and then distribute it the way a record label does, because fixing music is going to take experimentation. Pay for other musicians is astonishingly small and frightening. Bono sees it in his son's band, Inhaler, a really successful outfit, and it is still very hard to imagine how a young band like U2 would have been able to survive. It is fine for U2. Bono says the mistake was all on him. Apple took the punches. For Apple it was a rounding error and a reputational error, and he says he went a little too far on the experiment.

They take risks and have to. They fail and fall on their face, and that is part of the gig, because never taking a major risk would not be the band. They acknowledge they are not always going to get it right.