There’s been a pretty hefty backlash against the forced insertion of U2’s “Songs Of Innocence” into iTunes libraries across the globe. You can hide the album, but not delete it, and that presents a rather interesting thought.
Apple paid U2 for the album — that much was made clear on stage by Bono — and it’s been delivered to every single iTunes account on the planet, whether users wanted it or not.
That’s probably part of the deal too, and while it’s annoyed many (and I very much get why), does that also mean that Songs Of Innocence is by default the best selling album (by copies “sold”) ever made, even though clearly more people would have gone out of their way to buy, say, Thriller, Dark Side Of The Moon and Saturday Night Fever?

Would you be happier with this forcibly inserted on your iPhone?
If you do want to disable Songs Of Innocence, by the way, you can hide it from view, but not actually delete it from your iTunes library. Head into the iTunes app on a PC or Mac, go to “Purchased” under “Quick Links”, find Songs Of Innocence, hover over it with your mouse and click the X icon. Then choose hide. That should also stop it trying to automatically download to your iDevices through the Cloud as well.