Mumford & Sons: 'We will not sign up to Tidal'

British folk stars Mumford & Sons have accused Jay Z of using his new app Tidal to divide music lovers by forcing them to pick between streaming services.

The rapper relaunched the portal, a rival to music service Spotify, with a host of stars including Madonna and Rihanna last month (Mar15), and a number of artists, including Jay Z's wife Beyonce, have already released exclusive content on Tidal.

However, Marcus Mumford is adamant his band has no intention of becoming part of the wave of artists jumping ship to join Tidal, which is facing accusations it has been designed to make fans hand over more money to rich artists for their music.

He tells Thedailybeast.com,"We wouldn't have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don't want to be tribal... And when they say it's artist-owned, it's owned by those rich, wealthy artists... 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 (stuff). 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."

Guitarist Winston Marshall adds, "We don't want to be part of some Tidal 'streaming revolution' nor do we want to be Taylor Swift and be anti-it... I don't understand her argument, either. The focus is slightly missed. Music is changing. It's... changing. This is how people are going to listen to music now - streaming. So diversify as a band."

Taylor Swift removed her back catalogue from Spotify last year (14) as she did not agree with her music being consumed for free. Tidal has a top charge of $19.99 per month - around double the price of Spotify's top tier - and does not boast a free service like its rival.