Apple automatically add free U2 album to user libraries, but what does it mean for digital curation?

Earlier this evening, U2 announced their new album - with Apple giving it away immediately to all users for free. That’s a big story, but possibly not as interesting as the flip side to the arrangement.

Reports quickly started to appear on social networks of the album simply showing up in users’ libraries - both on laptops and iPhones. Checking our own devices at DIY, almost all of them currently have the album added, either automatically downloaded or ready to be delivered via iCloud.

This is usual for items purchased through the iTunes store, but few of us have actually gone and deliberately ‘opted in’ to receive the free download. Apple has, simply, just decided to do that for us. While users not using the iCloud system may be spared the album appearing automatically, it seems that everyone else will be receiving it, like it or not.

While giving millions of people (over half a billion, according to a press release issued earlier tonight) any album - not just a band like U2 - is unlikely to go down universally well, the issue at hand is less an artist specific one, but more one of curation.

With albums - or rather, physical records - one would carefully gather records you were proud of, stacking them on shelves, ordering them with specific systems, displaying great artwork or special editions. How you put together the collection was almost as important as collecting it in the first place.

Digital music has changed that. It would be silly to say the inherent value doesn’t at least feel changed, if not reduced. But still, an mp3 library - for a great many held within iTunes - is probably as close to those record shelves as we’d get. Some are certain to be very careful about what they put in there, especially on limited space devices, making sure each release has the right artwork, meta tags and fits their personal taste. With TV on demand we consume what we want, when we want it. Media isn’t just thrown at us anymore, but chosen by the user to create their own individual bubble. Even on Twitter, we curate the accounts we follow - though recent changes to the mobile apps, and the rise of advertising on the network, suggest that’s starting to change.

Regardless, to simply shove any old record in a user’s library suggests that curation, care and attention isn’t so important. They’re just files, right?

Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. As the digital space moves further to all you can eat, ad funded streaming services, maybe the next step is brands and bands forcibly adding tracks to your playlists for you? Stranger things have happened.