If you were one of the victims of the Apple x U2 promotion which deliberately infected your iTunes with a “gift” — the band’s new album Songs Of Innocence — there’s something you can do. It’s a pain in the ass:
Because U2’s album was distributed via Apple’s iCloud, the album is not stored locally on your iPhone or iPad. If there is a cloud icon with a down arrow next to each song, then the album hasn’t actually been downloaded yet. You cannot permanently remove an album stored in the cloud (ugh), however, you can hide it from displaying on your iPhone by going to Settings, clicking on Music, and toggling the “Show All Music” switch to off. Your device will only display music you have downloaded — however, there is a drawback: you won’t be able to download or stream music stored in iTunes in the cloud.
There’s also nothing you can do.
Even though it’s not on your device, when the album is available for download from the cloud, it will still be played in Shuffle mode — meaning you’re stuck with the U2 album through October 13, or until Apple fixes this. A simple fix for now would be to create a custom playlist on your iOS device and exclude U2’s Songs of Innocence from it.
Update: Apple knows how much you hate this shit. (Image: Apple)
