U2 frontman Bono closed the Web Summit yesterday, to much less fanfare than that which greeted PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk last year. The panel discussion with Bono, House of Cards producer Dana Brunetti, Soundcloud founder Eric Wahlforss and Bill McGlashan, partner with TPG Growth, failed to retain the audience, who began leaving the tiered seating.
“Streaming services are exciting,” the U2 singer said. “Songs are like our parents, they don’t like being ignored and anything that gets your songs out there is a good thing. This is an experimental and exciting period so let’s experiment and see what works.”
Internet’s ‘worst person’
Bono was asked by presenter New York Times media columnist David Carr how he felt about being the worst person on the internet in the three days following U2's iTunes giveaway.
“We got a lot of people uninterested in U2 to be mad at U2 and I think that’s an improvement in the relationship,” he said.
"One hundred million people checked out one or two or three tracks. Around 30 million people like the whole album. That took us 30 years with The Joshua Tree ," he added.
He also discussed how U2 and Apple had decided to partner to give the album away free.
"[Apple chief executive] Tim Cook said: 'Are you sure you want to give the album away free?' I said: 'No, I want you to buy the album, and you can give it away free.'"
Earlier, the centre stage heard from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. There was much laughter in the 5,000-strong audience when he was asked what the hardest thing about being a billionaire was. "It changes relationships with people in strange ways," he said.
He said everyone should do more to fight ageing. “Almost every disease in the world is linked to ageing,” he said.
Wifi issues
Age also seemed to be an issue for
Paddy Cosgrave
, who earlier in the afternoon said: “Old dudes hold this country back.” He called on the RDS to fix the summit’s wifi issues by allowing the event use an external provider such as
Cisco
. “Otherwise we won’t be in this country much longer,” he said.
RDS chief executive Michael Duffy last night said: "The Web Summit is an entirely unique technology event and, as with any technology event of this scale, does present certain unique challenges, due to the large numbers in attendance and the unprecedented demands on the wifi and network systems, aligned to extremely high volumes of devices concurrently accessing the network."
The summit is followed by two more events over the next few days. F.ounders will see 200 of the more experienced or senior entrepreneurs head to Ballymaloe, while the younger entrepreneurs off to the Surf Summit in Westport, Co Mayo.
