According to Gene Simmons, there isn’t going to be another KISS album unless there are some major changes in the way music is consumed.
While the band’s popularity, at least at the consumer level, has ebbed and flowed over the years, their last couple of albums have been major disappointments from a sales perspective. KISS have released twenty studio albums only four of which have not gone, at a minimum, gold (500,000 units sold). 1981’s Music From “The Elder” has sold about 375,000 copies while the more recent Carnival of Souls (1997) is at 181,000, Sonic Boom (2008) at 325,000 and Monster (2012) with 200,000.
Here’s the big difference in those totals. The Elder was a bomb, only reaching 75 on the Billboard 200 and Carnival of Souls only made 27; however, Sonic Boom peaked at 2 and Monster at 3, even with those excessively low sales totals.
With very few exceptions, today’s albums just don’t sell that many copies.
That’s why Simmons says that KISS are done in the studio unless he finds “a financial model that works”.
According to Gene, it’s file sharing and downloading that has killed the market although he didn’t address the general transition from buying music to streaming.
Simmons appeared on The SDR Show and said (courtesy of Blabbermouth):
[There’s] less of an incentive, because downloading and filesharing… People have convinced themselves they don’t wanna pay for stuff. And last time I checked, KISS is not a charity. We’re philanthropic, but I’ll be the one that decides how much I give and where. I don’t want some college kid to decide, ‘You have enough money. I don’t wanna pay for your record.’ Okay, then go download a RADIOHEAD record and see what happens No, I ain’t about that.
Make a distinction between commerce and philanthropy. So the idea of doing another KISS record, unless and if there’s a financial model that works, personally I’m not interested in it.
