In a new interview with The Daily Beast, Mumford & Sons gave their thoughts on the current state of the music industry, including some choice words for Tidal, the new streaming service helmed by Jay Z, Jack White, Daft Punk and others.
“We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal,” 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.”
Winston Marshall added, “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 is referencing an op-ed written by the pop star where she denounced services like Spotify. “I don’t understand her argument, either,” Marshall added. “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 continued, “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.”
The frontman also said that smaller bands have a “better opportunity in the music industry now than they’ve ever had” and that the music industry needs “to figure out how to represent people fairly financially.”
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