Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson Hates the New U2 Album — But Not for the Reason You Think

As you are no doubt aware, last week, Apple participated in iTunes rape by violently shoving a new, vastly unwanted U2 album into everyone’s clouds. It was a big PR stunt for both U2 and Apple, who were unveiling both the new iPhone and some stupid watch, but it was incredibly ill-conceived, an unpleasant reminder that we don’t really have control over our technology and that true privacy is basically dead. In fact, the uproar over the stunt was sufficiently loud enough for Apple to take steps to correct the issue. Reports Badass Digest:

“[Apple] are now offering a removal tool that will scrub the record from your cloud – basically they’ve admitted this was a weird version of malware.”

So the fact that this little surprise pissed off Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson for entirely different reasons would seem to suggest a serious disconnect between Nelson and the general public. He tells Northwest Music Scene:

“I think music has been devalued in the eyes of the consumer, to the point now where a band like U2 decides to just give its music away and basically tell people that their music isn’t worth anything, it should be treated like something free, and that’s a bummer because I know what it takes to make a record, I know what it takes to write a meaningful record full of songs, and get it into the consumers’ hands, and to me music still has a value, so it’s definitely something that I still struggle with.”

We hear this argument from musicians all the time, and it’s pretty tired. As we’ve said like a bajillion times here on MetalSucks, music actually DOESN’T have a monetary value, other than the monetary value we as a collective assign it. It’s a buyer’s market. U2 aren’t “telling people that their music isn’t worth anything” — they’re just acknowledging a fact. (Presumably, their hope was that people would like the album, and that that would translate into sales of merch and concert tickets.) But it’s not as though if U2 hadn’t done this, people everywhere would suddenly go, “Oh, U2 want money for their new album? Well, then, it must be worth something, because they say it is!”, and cease illegally downloading music forever.

And in any case, it’s all a moot point – because, ultimately, U2 couldn’t give their music away — literally.