What’s wrong with free music? Free music you never wanted.

This week, Apple announced the new iPhone 6, their new smartwatch and the fact that they were giving away 500 million copies of U2’s newest album through iTunes before it’s actual release in October, as stated by Speakeasy blogger John Jurgenson. What an awesome deal right? A free album from one of Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Artists of All Time,” automatically uploaded to your phone or downloadable and that can be shared on social media. It’s emerging media at its finest, a cross-promotional digital strategy for both Apple and the band.

Unfortunately, not everyone felt that this free music was so great. The deal has since received a huge backlash from Apple users who are simply not fans of the band, calling it a “digital violation.” It created furious Apple users and according to New Zealand 3 News blogger Paul Cashmere, the band’s reputation of “selling out” will have long-term effects.

This “digital violation” is exactly that. Apple in a way was technically violating customers by automatically downloading an album they’d never asked for. It’s now made users angry with Apple and only disliking the band U2 more. While it is certainly a nice gesture paid to U2 for its customers, not necessarily a bad promotion, it’s violation the privacy of it’s users. So what could they have done differently?

For starters, don’t automatically upload anything to your customer’s phones. Maybe the promotion would have been more successful if they had offered the download without it appearing automatically. In addition, while the deal was strictly between U2 and Apple, it may have worked better if the tech company made deals with other music labels and artists.  This way, they may have had albums who appealed to everyone, and again, not had them automatically appear on playlists. Nevertheless, both brands have received press so this promotional scheme did in a way work.

Apple has since let the public know that they are able to delete the album if they don’t want it to appear on the playlist, but what does this mean for other emerging media trends between tech companies and artists? Will we all begin randomly receiving music we don’t want? Is privacy ever a concern for the media, or now that we’ve all gone digital, we all have mobile providers, so does this mean we are at the mercy of whatever these tech companies choose?  Instead of creating good relationships with customers, marketers are beginning to botch whatever relationship they may have had with customers by going to far in violating the public’s digital privacy.