Mumford & Sons On Jay Z's Tidal: "That's Just Commercial Bullshit"

Mumford & Sons frontman, Marcus Mumford took aim at Jay Z’s recently announced Tidal streaming service. During an interview the The Daily Beast, Mumford referred to the artist-ran platform as “commercial bullshit.”

“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,” Marcus Mumford said. “That’s just commercial bullshit. We hire people to do that for us rather than having to do that ourselves. We just want to play music, and 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 up for paying for it, I don’t really care.”

Mumford & Sons says that the band would not have joined Tidal even if they had been invited by Jay Z. The UK band—which won Album Of The Year for Babel during the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards—also disagrees with Taylor Swift’s reasoning for removing her music from Spotify.

“We don’t want to be part of some Tidal ‘streaming revolution’ nor do we want to be Taylor Swift and be anti-it,” said Mumford & Sons guitarist, Winston Marshall. “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.”