U2's Bono has said he is "knocked out" by an independent survey claiming the band's songs were more popular on Apple iOS devices than material from any other musicians.

The news will come as little surprise to many Apple users - as the band’s latest album Songs of Innocence was added automatically to their iTunes digital libraries last September.

A Kantar Group survey claimed U2 was the most popular band among Apple users, with 23 per cent listening to at least one U2 song in January 2015.

“This is fantastic news. If these figures suggest that these songs still matter to people, then we’re knocked out. That’s all any songwriter wants,” Bono said.

The survey also claimed iOS users listened more often to U2 than to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry combined.

They saw 11 per cent and 8 per cent of users listen to their songs respectively, the survey said.

“It’s nice to know that five months on, so many people have discovered Songs of Innocence.

‘Big risk’

“In the end we just wanted people to hear the album. We took a big risk, but today we can say that the experiment worked,” U2 guitarist The Edge said.

Ninety five per cent of the U2 listeners played one or more tracks from Songs of Innocence, the Kantar survey added.

The band had apologised last October after its deal with iTunes to hand over the album to the online store’s estimated 500 million users for free caused a backlash.

The stunt angered some iTunes users, who complained the album was added to their collection whether or not they were U2 fans.

‘Carried away’

"I had this beautiful idea and we kind of got carried away with ourselves," Bono said in a question-and-answer session on Facebook.

“Artists are prone to that kind of thing. Drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life in to over the last few years mightn’t be heard.

“There’s a lot of noise out there. I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”

Press Association