UPDATE: I knew that it was just a matter of time before Apple released an official solution for permanently removing the U2 Songs of Innocence album from iTunes, and that solution has arrived!
To remove this album:
- Go to http://itunes.com/soi-remove.
- Click Remove Album to confirm you’d like to remove the album from your account.
- Sign in with the Apple ID and password you use to buy from the iTunes Store.
- You’ll see a confirmation message that the album has been removed from your account.
If you downloaded the songs to iTunes on your Mac or PC or to the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you’ll need to delete them manually.
Feel free to what I wrote before down below. I think it’s kind of entertaining, but the steps below no longer apply.
U2 is a very popular band, and Bono does wonderful things for the world, but that doesn’t mean we ALL enjoy their music and want it in our iTunes libraries!
On Facebook, some of my friends don’t see what the big deal is, since it’s free, but they tend to be the people who like U2, or at least Songs of Innocence. Those of us for whom the sound of Bono’s voice draws blood from our ears see it differently.
Jason Dobrolecki had the best analogy, “I’m going to bring you an ugly chair and put it in your house. Don’t complain because it’s free. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to sit in it. But no, you can’t get rid of it. Is that ok? I thought not.”
Musical taste is about as personal as anything gets, and Apple was presumptuous in adding U2’s Songs of Innocence to everyone’s iTunes Library without an opt-in or even an opt-out.
Sarah, aka one of the funniest people on Twitter got to the heart of the problem, “Oh man, I’ve discovered it’s even worse on the phone. The tracks are un-checkable. On desktop iTunes I can at least uncheck them, but in my phone I can’t opt out of having them on there at all. I’m going to have to make a whole playlist for everything that isn’t U2 if I want to use shuffle mode in my car (which I do a lot). DAMMIT U2.”
The great news is that you can at least hide the U2 album from iTunes. The less than great news is that it will persist in the cloud unless you’ve paid Apple for iTunes Match.
Podcaster extraordinaire P.W. Fenton, who thinks the album is “decent,” explained what to do in iTunes:
Step 1: In iTunes, go to the iTunes Store.
![U2 iTunes delete]()
Step 2: Go to Music Quick Links on the right side of the screen.
![How to get rid of U2 in iTunes]()
Step 3: If it hasn’t been downloaded to iTunes, you’ll find the U2 album in “Not in My Library. If it has been, you’ll find it in “All.” Hover over Songs of Innocence and an X will appear. Click that, confirm that you want it gone and that takes care of it in iTunes.
Deleting the U2 album from iPad or iPhone can currently only be done if you have paid for iTunes Match. If you’ve downloaded the song, or if they downloaded automatically, you can swipe your finger over the name of the song and a Delete button will pop up, however the song still shows up in your list of songs as downloadable.
If you seriously don’t want to see the name U2 in iCloud, you can go to the iPhone or iPad Settings app and switch “show all music” to off and that will keep you from seeing non-downloaded song titles. You also have to go into Settings for iTunes & App Store and turn off the automatic downloads of music option to keep the songs from showing up later.
If you really, really dislike U2, it may be possible to contact Apple Customer Service, which if you’ve never contacted them before, it’s a treat. They’re really great. I haven’t tried contacting them for this, only because it seems a little insane to dislike U2 THAT much. 
I’ll update this post if anything changes to make the process any easier. You can subscribe to receive my posts via email down below next to the ad for Divi, the best WordPress theme I’ve ever used.
