U2 Manager Discusses $100M ‘Songs of Innocence’ Marketing Deal and Future Plans With Apple

As part of its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch announcement, Apple featured U2’s latest “Songs of Innocence” album, making it the company’s biggest album release ever by providing the title to 500 million iTunes customers for free. The album and its lead single “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” are the cornerstone of an upcoming marketing campaign by Apple that is worth an estimated $100 million, although the deal has received some criticism from users who do not wish to have the album added to their iTunes accounts and in some cases automatically downloaded to their devices.

But the deal is a significant one by any measure, and Billboard Magazine sat down with U2’s new manager Guy Oseary to talk about the deal and the band’s future plans with the Cupertino company.

In the Billboard interview, Oseary shot down criticism that the deal was disruptive to the music industry and detrimental to other artists, arguing that the release is a “big concept” and should serve to inspire other musicians to innovate in their own way.

Well first of all, when music becomes a piece of the conversation at an Apple event, that’s always a good thing. Two is, the power of music and the fact that it can actually be shared with 7 percent of the planet in one push of a button. That’s a pretty big concept. Any sort of innovation may inspire other people to do things that are innovative. We may see someone sitting with another manager, or another band going, “Hey, what can we do that’s interesting maybe with our lyrics or our videos or something interactive with the ticketing to our shows?”

Oseary also confirmed that the Apple-U2 deal is a “long-term relationship”, with the parties working together to promote innovation in music.

We’re working on other things as well with Apple that have to do with how music is heard and innovation, with [iTunes VP of content] Robert Kondrk leading that charge. There’s a lot of things still to come that are really interesting. The band really wants people to engage with albums, they want them to support the art form of artwork and lyrics and video content and just get into their music in a much different way than an MP3 file.

Focusing on the deal itself, Oseary stopped short of confirming that Jimmy Iovine played a role in negotiating the deal, saying only that the Beats co-founder and now Apple employee has long been “a source of support and guidance” for the band. Given Apple’s long-standing interest in music and its dominant position that has been threatened in recent years by subscription services, Iovine has been viewed as a key reason for the Apple-Beats deal for his extensive relationships within the music industry.

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‘Incredible’ Response to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as Apple Sets Overnight Pre-Order Sales Record

Despite some significant hurdles that saw the U.S. Apple Online store remaining down until almost 3 AM Pacific Time and issues with ordering in the Apple Store app, it appears that Apple has set a new record for iPhone orders with last night’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders.

An Apple representative who spoke to Re/code mentioned that a new record had been set, but did not comment on the number of devices that were sold.

An Apple representative said that the overnight sales of the new iPhones set a record, though Apple did not say how many have been sold.

“Response to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus has been incredible with a record number of preorders overnight,” Apple told Re/code.

Apple’s statement follows a similar comment from AT&T executive Ralph de la Vega, who said “It’s amazing to see the volume” in reference to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus orders. De la Vega went on to say that demand for the phones is “better” than last year and the year prior.

At the beginning of the pre-order period last night, users were having trouble getting devices ordered due to continual errors in the Apple Store app and issues with carrier websites. Apple’s own online store didn’t come up until after 2:45 AM Pacific Time, nearly three hours after pre-orders were available in the Apple Store.

Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus was in short supply and shipping estimates slipped to 7 to 10 days for all models before the online store was even up, shortly after slipping further to 3 to 4 weeks. The company does, however, appear to have ample supply of the iPhone 6 as many models continue to be available for delivery on 9/19.

Prospective buyers iPhone 6 Plus buyers who missed preorders can still potentially pick up a device on September 19 by waiting in line at an Apple Store.

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Walmart and Best Buy Opt Out of ‘Apple Pay’ as Apple Leverages Required Point-of-Sale Upgrades

At its “Apple Pay” introduction earlier this week, Apple outlined a host of partners for the mobile payments initiative, ranging from credit card companies to the banks that issue the cards to retailers representing over 220,000 retail locations in the United States. Questions have remained, however, about how willing other retailers will be to sign on to the program and how quickly those that do will be able to get up and running.

In the wake of Apple’s announcement, several major retailers such as Walmart and Best Buy were in fact quick to state that they do not plan to support Apple Pay, as noted by The Wall Street Journal

Best Buy and Wal-Mart are instead backing a retailer-owned mobile technology group called Merchant Customer Exchange, which also counts Target Corp. among its members.

MCX’s payment service requires only a software download and can be used on existing iPhones and Android devices, whereas Apple’s is only for the latest generation handset.

For those retailers considering joining Apple Pay, however, it appears that Apple has timed its rollout perfectly. As highlighted by Pando Daily, Apple is taking advantage of regulatory changes that essentially require merchants to deploy new payment hardware in their retail stores over the coming year. This mass upgrade by over nine million merchants is the result of an updated credit card liability policy adopted by major credit card companies.

As of October 2015, any merchants that do not support EMV credit cards – smart cards with integrated circuits that enable point of sale authentication and help prevent fraud – will be liable for the fraudulent use of counterfeit, lost, and stolen cards. […]

These EMV cards and the resulting transactions are far more difficult to counterfeit than what Americans consider “standard” credit cards. While EMV is the norm around the world, only about 14 percent of US merchants support this technology today and very few consumers own credit cards incorporating these chips.

As a result of this change in credit card liability, merchants are upgrading their payment processing hardware to support EMV credit cards and other payment technology. With Apple now on board with NFC, a greater number of merchants who are in the middle of this decision-making process may choose NFC-capable POS hardware so they can process payments via Apple Pay.

Apple’s new Apple Pay service takes advantage of the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, stored credit cards, and a secure NFC connection to authorize payments at retailers’ physical stores and in compatible apps. Both the iPhone 6 handset lineup and the Apple Watch will support the wireless payment method.

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