Irish rock band U2 announced and released their new album “Songs Of Innocence”, on Sept. 9. The album was released for free and was available to anyone who uses iTunes, iTunes Radio, or Beats Music.

The catch however, was the album automatically downloaded into listeners iPhone’s, iPod’s, iPad’s, or computer music libraries, if one had their settings set to “automatically download purchases”.

While this may have been a steal and awesome for die-hard U2 fans; for some it was a nightmare not being able to delete the album as U2’s album release became an instant trend.

Many users complained about the issue via Apple’s support center online and also through social media sites such as Twitter.

Some however, praised U2 for a super-savvy marketing idea, in which they definitely promoted their album to millions of people around the world.

U2’s lead singer, Bono, later stated that Apple purchased the album for all of its users, in celebration of the ten year anniversary of U2’s iPod commercial.

Bono also stated, “People who haven’t heard our music, or weren’t remotely interested, might play us for the first time because we’re in their library. And for the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way… the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail.”

For some users, it seemed as a violation of privacy to have the album automatically appear in their music library.

U2 manager, Guy Oseary addressed the criticism by saying, “It’s a gift from Apple. If someone doesn’t like the gift, they should delete it.”

Deleting, however, proved difficult to many users. Apple acknowledged the criticism received and launched a website on Sept. 15, where users can remove the album from their iTunes library.

The site states: “If you would like U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence‘ removed from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases, you can choose to have it removed. Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to re-download as a previous purchase. If you later decide you want the album, you will need to get it again. The album is free to everyone until Oct. 13, and will be available for purchase after that date.”

Video courtesy of HLN via YouTube.