Mumford Passes On Tidal

The band, which apparently wasn’t asked to join Tidal’s initial wave of artists, raised several complaints about the service in a recent interview with the Daily Beast. “We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal,” frontman Marcus Mumford said. “I think smaller bands should get paid more for it, too. Bigger bands have other ways of making money, so I don’t think you can complain. A band of our size shouldn’t be complaining. And when they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists.

“What I’m not into is the tribalistic aspect of it – people trying to corner bits of the market, and put their face on it,” he continued. “That’s just commercial bullshit.”

Guitarist Winston Marshall also had some choice words for Tidal and for Taylor Swift, who came out against streaming in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last year.

“We don’t want to be part of some Tidal ‘streaming revolution’ nor do we want to be Taylor Swift and be anti-it,” Marshall told the Daily Beast. “I don’t understand her argument, either. The focus is slightly missed. Music is changing. It’s fucking changing. 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 stand-alone pieces of art, and also as adverts for our live shows.”