When U2’s thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, was automatically downloaded onto the iTunes accounts of approximately 500 million people, the band’s frontman thought listeners would be excited for the free music. However, after thousands of complaints were posted during the Irish band’s Q&A session on Facebook on Wednesday, Bono was forced to issue an apology for the unconventional publicity stunt.

U2’s last album, No Line on the Horizon, went on to sell five million copies. Reports show that of the 500 million iTunes users in 119 countries to have Songs of Innocence downloaded onto their accounts last month, only around 26 million actually wanted to possess the album.

“For the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way… the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail,” Bono jokingly wrote on the band’s website, unaware of the anger that several million iTunes users were feeling over the automatic download.

During U2’s Facebook chat, the band discovered that iTunes users prefer to be given the choice to freely download music if they want it. The general consensus of the thousands of complaints posted in the forums showed that users didn’t like that they didn’t get to choose whether or not the album was added to their music libraries, and one fan called the surprise release “really rude” and demanded that the band never put out an automatic download of their album on iTunes again.

Bono immediately apologized upon seeing this comment, saying “Oops. I’m sorry about that. I had this beautiful idea — might have gotten carried away with ourselves. Artists are prone to that kind of thing; a drop of megalomania, a touch of generosity, a dash of self-promotion, and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years might not be heard. There’s a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”

In an attempt to silence the sort of complaints seen in U2’s Q&A on Facebook, Apple created an entire website for users who wish to remove the automatic download from their devices, but this hasn’t stopped people from complaining that their privacy was invaded.