Marcus Mumford is seemingly unimpressed by Jay Z’s new streaming service Tidal stating that they “wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked.”
Jay Z along with some other big names in music such as Kanye West, Beyoncé, Madonna, Rihanna, Arcade Fire and Daft Punk launched Tidal last month which aims to be more beneficial to musicians. Mumford & Sons have dismissed this idea with Marcus Mumford saying “I think smaller bands should get paid more for it. Bigger bands have other ways of making money, so I don’t think you can complain. When they say its artist owned, it’s owned by those rich wealthy artists… I don’t want to align myself with Spotify, Beats, Tidal or whatever. We want people to listen to our music in their most comfortable way, and if they’re not paying for it, I don’t really care.”
Mumford & Sons have had their share of success with their album Babel being nominated for eight Grammy Awards, winning Album of the Year and also having the highest selling debut of the year. Even though the band don’t want to be part of the Tidal “tribe” they are not taking a Taylor Swift-esque stance with guitarist Winston Marshall stating “I don’t understand her argument, either… This is how people are going to listen to music now – streaming. So diversify as a band. It doesn’t mean selling your songs to adverts. We look at our albums as standalone pieces of art, and also as adverts for our live shows.”
Mumford and Son’s third album Wilder Mind comes out on May 4th.
Photo Cred: Andrea Sartorati