Mumford & Sons Refuse To Join TIDAL’s “Tribalist Commercial Bullshit”

Mumford & Sons outspoken frontman Marcus Mumford minced absolutely no words when proclaiming his disdain for the multi-millionaire artists owned TIDAL… and while the group was speaking freely, they took a dump on Taylor Swift. 

For the record, Mumford & Sons were NOT asked to join TIDAL at it's launch, but Marcus was quick to clear the air about any suspected aspirations of association. 

“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.”

While they were on a roll, Mumford & Sons Guitarist Winston Marshall didn't bother to sugarcoat his disdain to Taylor Swift's approach to the new music industry either saying, “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 says. “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.”

Mumford chimed in, “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 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 is a Grammy award winning band that is a long way from struggling to make it big, but they are optimistic about the future of musicians making their way up the ranks of today's industry. 

“Smaller bands have a better opportunity in the music industry now than they’ve ever had, because you don’t need to have a record deal to have your music listened to worldwide,” Mumford says. “It’s democratized the music industry. So as much as it sucks, and they need to figure out how to represent people fairly financially, you’ve never been able to get your music listened to more easily.”