HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD IS MYSPACE MUSIC MISTAKE
Myspace Music let Hollywood Undead get away by insisting that they censor their songs, and the band says they were better off not giving in. |
Hollywood Undead are becoming the next big act to spawn from the underground, and the three year battle to get their music out was actually a good thing. The band was one of Myspace’s most popular unsigned bands, and when the Interscope Record label group first signed them, they did a deal with Myspace Music for the release of the masked men’s first album. After Charle Scene, Johnny 3 Tears and the rest of Hollywood Undead submitted the album, Myspace Music passed on it due to its graphic content. |
Hollywood Undead talked about sticking to their guns. |
[Charlie Scene] “Yeah, we were never really signed directly to Myspace. We started off on Interscope and they wanted to release it on an indie type label so they went with Myspace just to release the album, and then they couldn’t do it due to the censorship issues. Well, they wanted to release it. They weren’t like, ‘No, we can’t release this.’ They were like, ‘Take these songs off, and let’s edit these, and let’s change your verses on some of these songs,’ and we just weren’t willing to do that, and they wanted us to. We said ‘No, we’re not going to do it,’ and it took a year of waiting around. We were thinking about just releasing it ourselves, and we weren’t sure it was going to happen, but A&M Octone came along and they were the perfect label for us. They’ve done a good job.” |
They also gave their current label, A&M/Octone a lot of credit because when they inherited the project they were already a million dollars in the hole. |
[Johnny 3 Tears] “It wasn’t a tough decision I think. Mainly for A&M Octone it was a risk at that point because we were in debt. We had a huge signing bonus, we spent a ton of money recording for a while, so they had to take on this million dollar baby already. It was a million bucks, not counting what they had to spend to get it out there. So that was their risk. I don’t think they ever doubted it. We met with the president and we continued these meetings, and then we kind of had an out because we met with Atlantic again, who we met with before Interscope, so they were worried about us leaving the Universal umbrella altogether. So A&M Octone said, ‘Screw it. We’ll take the gamble,’ and I think it’s paid off. We’re at over a quarter million units now and climbing, so they were smart They’re the ones stealing our money instead of Atlantic.” |
As of a few weeks ago their new album Swan Songs, was at 250,000 units sold, and many are expecting it to soar to over 500,000 units, good enough for Gold status, by the end of the spring. Hollywood Undead’s latest single is “Young,” and it follows in the footsteps of the groundbreaking “Undead.” |
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