“Now, you’re lucky if people listen to the first 30 seconds of every song on your album”: Are albums dead? Hollywood Undead think so
The debate on whether it’s better to release full albums or streams of singles has been going on for a while in the music industry. But for Hollywood Undead, whose latest full length album Hotel Kalifornia came out nearly three years ago, the answer seems pretty clear.
“Dude, cars don’t even have fucking CD players in ’em anymore,” says the band’s co-founder, Johnny 3 Tears. “What are we gonna release a record for? No one buys ’em.”
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In an interview with Skratch N Sniff and SNSMix.com, Johnny 3 Tears explains that there’s currently “almost no incentive” to make albums, and that he doesn’t “even know if anybody’s gonna do that anymore”.
“I used to love buying an album, and you read the liner notes and the thank yous,” he explains. “It was like an event. Now, you’re lucky if people listen to the first 30 seconds of every song on your album. And no one wants the physical product. It’s been negated by the streaming world.”
And in the age of streaming, the Hollywood Undead co-founder says it’s difficult to keep people’s attention for long. “Honestly, it’s hard to adapt to,” he explains, adding that he “can’t stand” the idea of making 15-second long snippets for platforms like TikTok. “It’s not my world. I’m just living in it,” he says.
But even beyond the social media landscape, Johnny 3 Tears says that being able to release songs individually relieves a lot of the pressure that comes with creating full albums.
“It sucks, because you write music all day every day, and every two years you’ve gotta put up 14 songs of the hundreds you’ve worked on,” he says. “Now we just write songs, send them in and they’ll be like ‘Yeah, let’s put it out in a couple weeks.’ That’s a lot more fun. There’s not so much weight on it.”
Although there’s no guarantee of a new album on the horizon, Johnny 3 Tears clarifies that new music is coming. “We have a bunch of songs lined up,” he says. “We’re just gonna release songs and videos and all the other stuff, and eventually maybe package it into a record for people who want a physical product.”
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