Madonna leaks; manager wants you to do his job for him

At first, it was just a bit of Madonna's forthcoming single, Rebel Heart, that had been pushed online.

That didn't make her happy.

But if Madonna was annoyed at her snatch leaking online, worse was to come. The whole thing is now out there.

People want to know what happened:

Guy Oseary took to Twitter to ask fans to assist in finding whoever was responsible for the leak.

He wrote: "I would be grateful to any @madonna fans that can assist us in finding those responsible for the leak. We appreciate your help."

Oseary is Madonna's manager. Not be confused with an ossuary, of course. One's job is to keep safe the skeletal remains of a human being; the other is an ossuary.

So, yes, Oseary has decided to ask Twitter if they knew "who was responsible". It's unclear if he followed up this with "nobody is in trouble, we just want to know" and "we're not angry, just disappointed".

It's surprising that Madonna's management team are so rickety they have to, effectively, ask the entire world who outsmarted them.

U2 apparently on a mission to turn cold reception of new album into full-on pitchfork rage

Guy Oseary, current U2 manager, isn't brooking any criticism of the flopped U2 album stunt. He tells Mashabale:

"It’s a gift from Apple," Oseary said. "If someone doesn’t like the gift, they should delete it. ... There are people who are going to be thrilled to get a gift. There are people who are not going to care to have this gift. We knew all of that going in. No surprises here. If someone doesn’t like it, then great, that’s OK, delete it. ... We just want to share it with as many people as possible. If you don’t want it and you don’t need it, delete it."

If it was just as simple as deleting it, this would still grate - because why should it be incumbent upon a person to have to clean up the firm turd left on their living room carpet? True, you can just pick it up and throw it away, but it might have been nicer to be asked in the first place - 'Do you want a free U2 album' - so we could all say 'is it one from the early 80s?' before going 'no'.

But it's not just a case of simply deleting it. Because it's not a firm turd; it's a runny one, and you either can at best "hide" the thing, or have to go to Apple and use a special tool to get all the dribble off your carpet.

A gift you can refuse is one thing. A gift that you have to invest time and effort into just pushing out of sight is another.

Something else interesting from the Mashable Q&A. When asked about how the release had been received, Oseary has a bright side:

A lot of people, from the look of the iTunes chart, are clearly rediscovering the band’s catalog or discovering it for the first time.

But then, asked about if it was disappointing that the record wasn't yet eligible for Billboard:

It doesn’t bother me because I haven’t even wrapped my head around it yet. I’m not looking at the charts as high on my list of concerns.

I mean, who cares about charts, right, unless the information they're giving us is useful for the purposes of spinning the biggest backsplash PR disaster since someone wrote 'New' on a flipchart at the Coca-Cola Company?