[NewsPoster]

U2's Songs of Innocence album -- which Apple is currently giving away for free via iTunes -- has already been downloaded over two million times since Tuesday, sources say. The group's back catalog appears to be doing well as well, with 17 albums on the iTunes Top 100 chart, led by The Joshua Tree at number 12.

It's not clear how many people downloaded the album of their own volition, since Apple made it available to every iTunes account library, and both iTunes and iOS devices can be set by users to download new purchases automatically, which would trigger a download whether the user wanted the album or not. For most users, however, the album just appears as already purchased in their iTunes history, and can be downloaded or ignored as desired.

Apple is believed to have paid a significant sum to secure the giveaway. On top of a blanket royalty fee, it's allegedly paying for a marketing campaign valued up to $100 million. U2 manager Guy Oseary says that the band is "working on other things as well with Apple that have to do with how music is heard and innovation, with [iTunes VP of content] Robert Kondrk leading that charge." Without going into much more detail, he adds that the band "really wants people to engage with albums, they want them to support the art form of artwork and lyrics and video content, and just get into their music in a much different way than an MP3 file."

Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine -- now with Apple -- is said to have a role in the Apple/U2 partnership, having been instrumental in the release of the U2 special-edition iPod nearly 10 years ago. "We look to Jimmy for guidance and support no matter what we end up doing," Oseary said. "Whether it's this project or talking about the next single, or whether we're talking about doing other things down the road. [Iovine and I] talk about family, trips, things that we wanted to to do in our personal lives -- we're really connected, we're really supportive. Jimmy is near and dear to this band, he's definitely a source of support and guidance … we consider him family, and there's been a lot of hand-holding together through this process."

[Bermy]

You almost make that sound like a lot considering iTunes has over 500 million subs. What the headline should say is "Only .4% of iTunes subscribers care they got a free album from U2 since it was announced".

[azrich]

And most of those downloads were on purpose.
Still, it seems that this has increased sales of their whole catalog so I saw 'well done' to U2 in promoting themselves.

[Charles Martin]

Bermy: that's about a million albums a day. You can bet that total will go up significantly by October 13. I haven't pulled my copy yet, and I doubt I'm alone in that (not a huge U2 fan but wish them well, worth checking out the album for free as far as I'm concerned)

[thinkman]

Wrong! 500 Million copies of the album were AUTOMATICALLY downloaded to your iCloud account! All you have to do to access it is to go to "Purchases" at the bottom of the iTunes Music page, and there it is. Doesn't mean you have to download it from the cloud, but you own it nevertheless if you ever care to listen to it. I'm not a big U2 fan (hell, I'm nearly 70), but what I've heard of the album so far is quite good!