Piracy, he said, was the "most difficult aspect of our work. Ten years on there is no clear answer. I firmly believe artists should be paid for what they create. The bands coming up now are having such a hard time. The bands on the cusp, for them that revenue stream of selling records is gone. Music has become a loss leader for merch and tickets. It's hard for them."
He recalled fans who would approach him after gigs, asking him to autograph a burned Blink-182 CD. "It's a hard balance; you want people to list to an artist and for the artist to get paid. I haven't wrapped my head around it. There are great artists who can't support themselves and it's a tragedy."
After a five-year separation, the trio reunited in 2011 and last year self-funded the EP Dogs Eating Dogs, which dropped as a digital-only release last December. The decision to release the track online wasn't so much built into a new media plan, but was rooted in "laziness," he joked. "We rushed to get the EP recorded, mixed and mastered in time for its release. Then we had a holiday, and forgot about the physical product. We are not good businessmen," he admitted. "We don't think like that. We didn't get a physical product out because we were too lazy to print them up."
Hoppus, who now lives in London and co-owns a studio in L.A., also opened up on his personal fascination with all things new and digital.
"I don't' stream or buy CDs... pretty much everything I buy I do it on iTunes. I miss the experience of walking into a record store and find old stuff without expecting to. You don't get that experience anymore, talking to people in-store. But now, at least, I can buy music at 2am in my underwear. I like that. I like the convenience of buying music in my underwear."
The group will soon start rehearsals for their upcoming tour of Australia. "We never relied on our label for tour support. We never wanted to go into debt to tour, we always did it within our means, he said. We always toured on our own, never needed a label to give us money to tour."
