Apple Creates Tool for Users to Delete Unwanted U2 Album

[Zxxv]

His statement still stands. The album takes up virtually nothing. I have singles that take up more space, granted they're 24-bit.

is that why people are hating it so much?

and why Tim Cook said he's been told he's a great negotiator?

the album is compressed to ****?

he got a good deal if they compressed it?

and next month the tuned for iTunes version will release?

 

[sonicboom]

Overly compressed

is that why people are hating it so much?
the album is compressed to ****?

This implies the majority of people hate it.

I think some people do, and are making a fuss about it. Nobody knows what the true like/dislike ratio is (perhaps Apple can data mine it).

I do agree that the album is overly compressed. For example, the phrase "I don't believe anymore" in Raised by Wolves wobbles on the high. Makes me cringe every time, as no way is this what the artist intended.

 

[UpperQuadrant]

So this is what Jimmy and Dre were hired for? To give people music they don't want?

It sounds like they were hired because that was the terms and conditions of buying Beats. I think it means "If we sell Beats, then you need to hire us and put us in some top level position." The thing is, what positions are these two in?

It took Apple a while to figure out where to put Dr. Dre and Iovine since neither of them have any software, hardware engineering experience, neither of them have actual college education, they are merely two people that have experience in producing albums, and I use the term Producing loosely. What they do know is how the music industry works, they have contacts with a lot of famous celebrities in the music industry. They both know what kind of music the kids are into, even if it's not high quality music.

U2 is signed to Iovine's record label (that was sold) called Interscope and Apple has had a long standing relationship with Bono (along with his Red project). I think Apple thought that this would be a great way to promote Apple, iTunes, and U2 since U2 hasn't put out an album in 5 years.

The reason why it kind of backfired was the way the album was produced. The sound quality is not a problem with iTunes, it's a problem with how the album was produced.

There was a lot of signal processing, audio compression and a lot of people simply don't like the sound of that type of musical recording. It wouldn't have sounded that much better if it was a 16 Bit Redbook version. I don't know how they originally recorded the music. If they recorded it at 16 Bit, then it gets altered during the mixing and mastering to sound as bad as it does. If it was originally recorded at 24 Bit and converted to 16 Bit, then sounds a little worse due to down sampling. If it was originally recorded in analog and then converted to digital, then it get worse in sound quality during that conversion. one of the biggest culprits of sound degradation is audio compression if there is a substantial amount used, so it can compress the audio signal to the point where it makes everything sound, compressed and it loses the dynamic range, etc. It's commonly done with certain types of musical recordings. Typically with more recent (over the last 20 or 30 years) rock bands is where it's commonly done. Back in the olden days of rock, they didn't use a lot of compression or signal processing since very little existed. This whole phenomenon started happening more in the later 70's and then even more in the 80's when digital recordings, Pro Tools started to take over.

The bottom line is that the album wasn't that great for some people because they simply don't like heavily processed albums, which this was.

Apple was trying to be forthright in what they were doing, but U2 simply put out a crappy album, by many people's standards. I think Apple should learn from this and instead of trying so hard to promote one band, they SHOULD have simply given away 1 free album download or 10 free songs download and let people choose what they want, then everyone's happy.

Here's U2 position (guess), U2 wants to be the "biggest band in history". The Biggest Selling rock band is the Beatles and the biggest selling single album of all time has about 100 Million units sold of all of their albums combined. Michael Jackson's Thriller was the biggest single album sold at over 42 million so U2 is trying to break both records held by the Beatles and Michael Jackson, but I guess they might not be able to do that.

At this time, I don't know of any other band that is still together that could potentially attract that many downloads except for maybe the Rolling Stones, but I don't know if they could have gotten them, especially since they let Microsoft use the Start Me Up song for a Microsoft Windows promotion when Microsoft released Windows 95.

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is that why people are hating it so much?

and why Tim Cook said he's been told he's a great negotiator?

the album is compressed to ****?

he got a good deal if they compressed it?

and next month the tuned for iTunes version will release?

He was just adding levity to the situation.

Yes, they used a TON of audio compression, which make the recording sound like #$%^. Audio compression is different than file compression, but it takes away the sound quality dramatically and destroys the dynamic range.
I don't know if they are going to remaster it and take out the audio compression. It would be a great start if they did, but I thought they used too much other signal processing as well, plus it just wasn't that great of a production in the first place, which they should know better. They have unlimited amounts of cash to make a great recording.

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This implies the majority of people hate it.

I think some people do, and are making a fuss about it. Nobody knows what the true like/dislike ratio is (perhaps Apple can data mine it).

I do agree that the album is overly compressed. For example, the phrase "I don't believe anymore" in Raised by Wolves wobbles on the high. Makes me cringe every time, as no way is this what the artist intended.

They were using both lots of audio compression, but they were using lots of signal processing on the vocals and guitars especially. I only listened to the album once very briefly and it was horrible sounding and I have a pretty good stereo that I'm listening with, so it was just a badly recorded, mixed and mastered album. I personally don't care for most of U2's actual music, I think it's kind of similar sounding and they really aren't that hereat of musicians so I think they have to cover up bad playing and bad singing with lots of processing/compression. At least that's what a lot of bands do..

 

[jimthing]

TEN YEARS LATER...

We now have this U2 album being wondered about causing issues here:

"Apple Now Lets You Move Digital Purchases From One Apple Account to Another"