This all gives new meaning to the name “Daily Swipe”

Arguably, one of the least interesting things about the new U2 album Songs of Innocence is the music. Even loyal fans will likely agree with remarks like “U2 stays in top form by running in place”, or “it’s the best Coldplay album ever made”. It’s a reliable effort by U2, and features some great engineering and production in places, thanks to Danger Mouse, Flood, and Adele producers Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder.

But no, the real genius of U2’s new album is all in the marketing. We live in a world where people routinely bitch about how their free or cheap stuff sucks. This was brought into sharp focus last week, when iTunes users the world over started bitching about the fact that U2 and Apple gave them a free album. Someone at Apple must have understood this even better than you or I do; I wouldn’t think that giving away 500 million copies of an album would cause so much irritation, but Apple does their research before doing stuff like this, so they MUST have known.

They also probably knew that in spite of all this grumbling, no-one who uses iTunes or Apple products will suddenly stop. But there are a couple of other surprising side effects created by releasing an album this way. One is that U2 won’t bullet on the Billboard charts. Another is that they won’t be able to take part in next year’s Grammy Awards. Don’t shed any tears for the band though, they were paid an estimated $100 million or more for the deal. Bono and U2 management are quite adamant that free music sucks, even if they make millions from it.

But that’s not even the real genius here. The real genius is that not only did the U2 freebie overshadow the news about the iPhone 6 or the new Apple Watch, it was all apparently a sideshow to distract you from the REAL agenda, which was almost certainly the $40 Billion Apple stands to reap from the banking deals for their new payment system, Apple Pay  .

Cha ching!