Bono blamed for unreleased U2 songs on Internet

U2

(Credit: U2.com)

The next time U2 manager Paul McGuinness wants to rant about music piracy on the Internet, he may have to add his own boss to his list of targets.

Four songs from the Irish rock band's forthcoming album found themselves on the Internet after U2 front man Bono was caught playing the songs a bit too loudly on his stereo at his villa in the south of France, according to a report in The Sun. An alert passerby on the beach is credited with recognizing the iconic singer's voice and recording what he was hearing. He then supposedly posted the recordings to YouTube, but the tracks don't appear to have stuck around long on the video-sharing site.

The songs--thought to come from a forthcoming album called "No Line On The Horizon"--include the title track, "Sexy Boots," "Moment Of Surrender," and "For Your Love."

McGuinness, who wants to fight file sharing by forcing Internet service providers to ban people who pirate music, suggested earlier this year that Apple and other makers of digital music players were wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits." At the time, he placed much of the blame on tech companies, but also pointed a finger at record labels that "through lack of foresight and planning allowed a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."

If this tale rings true, it wouldn't be the first time U2 has lost control of unreleased music. In 2004, just before the release of their last album--"How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb"--the band reported that a CD containing unfinished music from that album had been stolen after a photo shoot in the south of France. The band announced it would release that album immediately if tracks from the CD were leaked online. But when songs from the album began appearing online a few months later, the band said they were finished versions, not songs from the stolen CD.

[gsmiller88]

How about keeping Bono out of southern France!

[vhuskey]

***?

Please ... tell me this is an urban legend. This just sounds too ridiculous to be true.

[benjwah]

This is surprising. U2 have a strong history leading the charge against piracy by releasing terrible albums no one could possibly want to listen to, paid for or otherwise.
If their manager wants to do something about piracy for real, he should invent a time machine that takes them back to when they made music worth paying for.

[vhuskey]

not true. i want to listen to them. i have every album, and would pay triple the price, and call it cheap.

[UITD]

Troll

[t26l]

Southern France must bring bad luck. They probably realize the pattern by now, eh? You can definitely order nice French cheese from other countries in the world...

[M C]

Ben, that was sooo funny the Internet forgot to laugh.

[M C]

I'm sure the quality of those distantly recorded through-the-walls tracks were top-notch. Um, not.

[imacpwr]

Most likely this is nothing more than a publicity stunt on Bono's part. Release some faint distant recordings of his new songs while telling the world a "neighbor" must have just happened by with a tape recorder..

yea right..

even c¦net fell for it.

[orphu]

You hit the nail on the head.

[Travis Ernst]

ROFL! Did Bono forget to bring his AKG headsets to the studio?

[sadchild]

i think the REAL news story here is that there is still one person in the world who likes U2 music so much he plays it loud enough to be heard from the street.

and that man is Bono.

[vhuskey]

just one? this album will go platnum over night

[kwilsonjr]

Online music sales reached 30 BILLION Dollars last year. They complain about it in public while they laugh all the way to the bank.

iTunes 'burglary tools'? Ha! The only burglars around here are the artists themselves demanding outrageous prices for crappy music.

[UITD]

I would pay a DIME for the crappy QUALITY of that music FORMAT. MP3 sucks. If you really DO care about the quality of the music, you wont purchase it from itunes or anywhere else other than the already reduced-quality CD.
As far as the music, itself, being crappy. That goes for about 99% of the so-called music being created these days. I thank God that I no longer use the FM dial because when I do get a piece of what is playing today, I am happy as a pig in **** that I dont A) pay for it and B) listen to it.

[mikeburek]

This is bad. Remember there was a auto repair shop (in England, I think) that was accused (by a European version of the RIAA) of giving illegal distribution of music because they had the radio in the repair bay loud enough that customers in the office could hear it? This would show that playing music too loud is distribution.

[Zanny_Blowzsteve]

Pot,+ Kettle=Black

"McGuinness, who wants to fight file sharing by forcing Internet service providers to ban people who pirate music, suggested earlier this year that Apple and other makers of digital music players were wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits." At the time, he placed much of the blame on tech companies, but also pointed a finger at record labels that "through lack of foresight and planning allowed a range of industries to arise that let people steal music."

WOW. The hypocrisy of U2, to actually call Apple & iTune/ iPods "burglary kits", Especially after signing on with the burglers at Apple to create the U2 Editions of iPods, & to appear in sillouette form in iTunes commercials !

I tend to not care either way, because I'm smart enough to know there are better, superior mp3 players, better music player software, and better computers than the crud Apple sells.

And I happily will continue to use all those non-Apple products. And U2? Wasn't their music relevant once?