Tidal relaunched 2 weeks ago, and I was a critic of the service right off the bat. I think the messaging is horrendous (millionaires in million-dollar outfits complaining about not getting enough money) and the service itself is worse and more expensive than it’s competitors. Mumford & Sons are most concerned with making their fans subscribe to a specific service just to listen to certain artists.

To Mumford & Sons, the very mention of Tidal is greeted by a series of loud fart sounds. And no, they were not asked by Mr. Z to join Team Tidal.

“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.”

They also drop this straightforward wisdom later on:

“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.”

Also talking to The Daily Beast, Death Cab for Cutie’s frontman, Ben Gibbard:

Gibbard says the service is dead on arrival.

“If I had been Jay Z, I would have brought out ten artists that were underground or independent and said, ‘These are the people who are struggling to make a living in today’s music industry."

“There was a wonderful opportunity squandered to highlight what this service would mean for artists who are struggling and to make a plea to people’s hearts and pocketbooks to pay a little more for this service that was going to pay these artists a more reasonable streaming rate,” he continues. “And they didn’t do it. That’s why this thing is going to fail miserably.”