U2’s song, “Invisible,” premiered on a Super Bowl XLVIII commercial in February.
The song was available for free on iTunes two days after an average 112 million viewers tuned in to see the Seattle Seahawks beat the Denver Broncos.
Their song “Ordinary Love” for the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom was nominated for an Oscar.
In early March, U2 performed the song live on the 86th Annual Awards show that reached an audience of 43 million viewers in the United States alone.
U2 performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on its first show as its first music guest. Thanks to heavy promotion during the Winter Olympics on the same network, there was an average of 2.4 million viewers seeing the band play a performance of “Ordinary Love”.
With that exposure and 22 Grammy’s associated with their back catalog, the next logical step is to cash in on all those high profile appearances.
Last week, during Apple’s keynote presentation unveiling the new two iPhone and Apple Watch, the band performed a new song via live stream.
Immediately after playing, Apple released a new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, to 500 million iTunes account holders around the world for free.
The world’s largest album release ever for the world’s greatest rock band, the reaction to a free album was somewhat underwhelming:
Who tf is U2 and why are they in my music??? 🙁
— Isaiah Lewis (@isaiah73831448) September 14, 2014
Why is there a U2 album on my iPhone? I don’t even know who they are 🙁 At least get some Michael Jackson who people have heard of
— Dilly (@dilly1993) September 14, 2014
Who is U2 and why are they in my phone ?
— Linda_Myk19 (@lindamykitten) September 14, 2014
Even one good Samaritan actually went into iTunes and figured how to “delete” the album from the iCloud so it won’t show up in a user’s local account.
With the new season of Saturday Night Live almost upon us, it’s almost assured that U2 will be a musical guest to promote a rumored second album and upcoming tour like they’ve done for past projects.
At this point, though, why bother?
With so much television (and a little bit of movie) exposure not panning out, it’s enough to make you think traditional media is dead.