Folk-rock superstars Mumford & Sons might have just started some beef with Jay Z after they criticised his new streaming service Tidal as being for the benefit of “new school f***ing plutocrats”.

In a new interview with The Daily Beast, lead singer Marcus Mumford was insistent that his band has no intention of being one of the big name artists to abandon Spotify in favour of the subscription-only service Tidal, which was re-launched by a galaxy of stars at a New York press conference at the end of March.

Mumford And SonsMumford & Sons performing live

Mumford believes that Tidal is only serving to divide music fans into tribes, and forcing people to hand over money to already-wealthy artists if they want to stream their catalogues. “We wouldn't have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don't want to be tribal.”

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“And when they say it's artist-owned, it's owned by those rich, wealthy artists,” he 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 bull****.”

Mumford & Sons are miles away from being a struggling band, obviously, so their stance is possibly surprising. Their second album Babel, released three years ago, got nominated for eight Grammy Awards and sold over 600,000 copies in its first week on the Billboard 200. Their third album, Wilder Mind, is due for release in June.

Referring to Taylor Swift’s anti-Spotify Wall Street Journal article last year, guitarist 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. I don't understand her argument, either. The focus is slightly missed. Music is changing. This is how people are going to listen to music now: streaming. So diversify as a band.”

More: Jay Z gets support of big guns to launch Tidal streaming service