Most of the announcements Apple made last Tuesday were greeted with applause from the audience and general praise from the Internet, but everyone was understandably unsure of how to react when U2 appeared to reveal that their new album had been injected into every iTunes account without our permission. For many, this strange, but ultimately harmless, gesture struck a nerve, which has forced Apple to give disgruntled iTunes users a way to quickly remove the album from their libraries.
If you don’t want to have U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence, crowding up your iTunes library, these are the steps to take:
- Go to http://itunes.com/soi-remove.
- Click Remove Album to confirm you’d like to remove the album from your account.
- Sign in with the Apple ID and password you use to buy from the iTunes Store.
- You’ll see a confirmation message that the album has been removed from your account.
If you haven’t downloaded the album yet, it will be removed from your account entirely. If you did download the album, but don’t want to have to look at it any more, the link above will hide Songs of Innocence from your Purchased list. You can unhide it by navigating to your Account Settings. And don’t feel too bad — Bono and co. are going to be fine whether you decide to keep the album or not.
