The death of troubled U.K. singer Amy Winehouse rocked the entertainment world this weekend, but it was a poor choice of tie-in tweet that turned some fans’ sadness into rage this morning.
Early Monday morning, an online uproar erupted when a tweet went out from Microsoft U.K. PR urging followers to remember the musician by downloading one of her albums from Microsoft’s online music service, Zune.
“Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking ‘Back to Black’ over at Zune,” announced the @tweetbox360 account, and provided a link to the album.
The online world quickly went on the attack, criticizing and ridiculing the company for the perceived insensitivity of the message. The company quickly followed up with a pair of tweets apologizing for the initial “Remember Amy Winehouse…” message.
“Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download’ tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you,” the company tweeted.
The apology continued with another message a short time later: “With Amy W’s passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy’s family and friends at this very sad time.”
However, as reported by Mashable, it’s not uncommon for a musician’s projects to receive a post-mortem surge, and Winehouse’s albums now sit atop the iTunes charts thanks to a “Remembering Amy Winehouse” campaign launched by Apple just after her death.
