When the Jay Z-spearheaded streaming service Tidal was first unveiled, it would be generous to say that public reaction was mixed at best. Well, indie folk rockers Mumford and Sons blew the doors off of “mixed” and drew a deep line in the sand against Tidal and everything it stands for in a profile with the Daily Beast.
“We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal,” says frontman Marcus Mumford. “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.”
But the Mumford frontman wasn’t the only one speaking out. Guitarist Winston Marshall referred to the Tidal press conference as a collection of “new school f*cking plutocrats.”
Seemingly, the group doesn’t have a problem with paying for a music service, but with the perceived battle lines when you join on with a premium brand.
“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. That’s just commercial bullsh*t. 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.”
While that may not be too much of a headache for a platinum-selling and Grammy Award-winning act like Mumford and Sons, the group complains that for smaller artists, platforms that don’t reward their work could break them.
Either way, it seems that they probably won’t be making that rap album with Jay they teased a while back. It was all good a week ago.
(Via the Daily Beast)
