Music legend Neil Young has spent several years trying (and failing) to push high-resolution music to the masses. A new book by Young tells the story of how the Canadian songwriter set out to develop Pono, his $400 portable digital music player that...
Neil Young could be about to launch the most interesting streaming service to come along in a long while. No, really.
Young recently spoke at length with Rolling Stone's Music Now podcast. While mostly discussing music, he also divulged his future p...
Last night on The Tonight Show there was not one but two Neil Young’s. Jimmy Fallon decided to accompany Neil Young on the stage by impersonating as his clone. Fallon and Young seemingly...
Despite being relatively pricey for a portable music player, Neil Young’s PonoMusic reached the $800,000 target within a day since the campaign started, fact that emphasizes the capabilities of this device.
Having raised more than three times the initial goal, the PonoPlayer developed by Neil Young and his company, PonoMusic, seems to have a lot of fans among the users of the crowdfunding platform. Considering the benefits brought by this high-fidelity portable music player, the success of the Kickstarter campaign started by Neil Young shouldn’t surprise anyone.
While exhibiting the product at the SXSW music convention, Young explained that “This is rescuing music. It’s an artist-driven movement to take it back.” The singer declared war on MP3 files a while ago, as he considers that these degrade the music listening experience, which really should be something sacred.
The Canadian singer-songwriter pointed out that youngsters who rely on MP3s are deprived from the three-dimensional, immersive sound that they should experience: “They can identify the name of the song and they can learn the melody from listening to it, but inside their souls they’re just not getting what we got because there’s just nothing there for them. The human body is so sensitive….when it sees great art, it feels good. (So) with our music, we were deprived and we started getting very little, a minuscule 1/20th of what we listened to.”
The PonoPlayer and the companion music store PonoMusic are meant to offer an alternative to the iPods and iTunes Stores, with a focus on high-resolution music similar to the one produced in studios. PonoMusic and the PonoPlayer will be capable of playing back music with a 9,216 kbps bitrate, while iTunes delivers songs with 256 kbps. As Young put it, “So now you’ll hear the nuances, the soft touches, and the ends on the echo – the texture and the emotion of the music the artist worked so hard to create.” Sir Elton John emphasized the difference by saying that “I haven’t heard a sound like that since vinyl. It was wonderful.”
PonoPlayer’s Kickstarter campaign still has 32 more days to go, so if you want to secure one for yourself, back the project with $300. For $100 more, you can get a player signed by one of the following artists: Patti Smith, Tom Petty, Beck, Arcade Fire, Dave Matthews Band, The Foo Fighters and others. The cost of the albums, on the other hand, will range between $14.99 and $24.99.
Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the
When Neil Youngrevealed Pono on the Letterman show, he mainly talked about how the high-fidelity music service would work. Now that Young and his team have announced an early 2014 target launch, it's looking more likely that Pono might actually happen. In a statement posted on Facebook, the team says it will launch both its online music store for high-quality audio and its player -- an updated version of the one shown on Letterman -- at the same time. Young claims the service can replicate the quality of music played in a studio, but we'll have to wait until next year to find out if it can actually deliver. Sadly, Team Pono isn't sharing other details, but we'll keep an eye out for future updates.
Neil Young isn't shy when it comes to embracing new technology, something he put beyond question with his latest appearance on The Late show with David Letterman. The artist took the opportunity to reveal plans for his high-fidelity Pono music service. The aim is to tackle the poor quality in which he believes most people receive their music these days -- the humble MP3. Young's offering would comprise a three-pronged approach, including a music store with high-resolution recordings, a digital-to-analog style conversion technology, and portable hardware to listen to it all with. The simple intention is to offer music as it was originally intended to be heard, but at this time there's no detail as to what this actually entails (sorry specification fans).
According to Rolling Stone, the big three labels are interested, and the goal is to unify, rather than diversify, the quality of recorded content. The Pono players (that yellow wedge you see above) will serve up your existing catalog, but you'll likely need to re-buy some of your collection if you want the holistic experience. With no cards fully on the table, we're at the ransom of Young's celebrity endorsements, which all claim that the benefits are tangible. Young, of course, says "You can't get better than this, this is what they do in the studio," but until we get some details, or ears on, everybody knows this is nowhere.
Music legend Neil Young has spent several years trying (and failing) to push high-resolution music to the masses. A new book by Young tells the story of how the Canadian songwriter set out to develop Pono, his $400 portable digital music player that...
Neil Young could be about to launch the most interesting streaming service to come along in a long while. No, really.
Young recently spoke at length with Rolling Stone's Music Now podcast. While mostly discussing music, he also divulged his future p...
