Neil Young’s Pono Finally Launches, But Will Anyone Care?

Noted music artist Neil Young’s pet audio project Pono Music finally launched with a big sendoff at this year’s CES show, complete with a website full of high-resolution downloads and an unusually shaped player that will be in the stores on Monday. That’s all well and good, but will there actually be a market for the offerings? 

It’s difficult to start a new music service these days, and Young should get props for following through on such a laudable idea. Anyone who creates music on a high level (especially music using real instruments and players) hates to hear what happens to it after most audio compression algorithms that are in use today get hold of it. So much of the emotional impact that the artist lived with during recording is drained from it as frequencies are literally stripped away in order to decrease the file size. 

That said, artist’s have traditionally always had a complaint about the final distribution package sold to the public, whether it be vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, downloads or streaming. It just never sounds the same as in the studio, although many will tell you that the current state of digital music distribution is the worst it’s ever been in that regard.

The fact that Young has followed his heart and tried to do something about this is very cool. The problem is, Pono the company seems to be selling the ecosystem as a mass consumer product when there’s about zero chance it will be received that way. Here’s why.

1. It’s now a streaming music world, but Pono Music is a download service. No doubt that when Young first conceptualized Pono downloads sounded like a good idea. However, in 2015 there’s no sign that fans will come rushing back to the format any time soon when they’re just discovering that they can have millions of songs at their fingertips for anywhere from zero to 10 bucks a month via streaming. Which brings us to…

2. It’s expensive. First you have to buy the Pono music player at $399, which is far more than the majority of music consumers want to pay considering that their phone has become their playback device of choice. There’s also a lot of player competition on the market for less money (check out the FiiO series of players). Not only that, then you have to buy the music that you want to listen to from the Pono store and it’s not cheap (anywhere from $18 to $25 for an album and $1.99 a song). Considering that you can purchase the same album for $7 on Google Play, the cost of the extra audio quality will be a non-starter for many. See more on Forbes.

The Tiny Piece That Neil Young's Pono Needs To Succeed

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Neil Young’s dream of a higher quality consumer music service appears to be slowly getting closer, as evidenced by the latest announcements at the annual South by Southwest conference and its accompanying Kickstarter campaign. Pono Music, in which Young is heavily invested, is a high-quality audio ecosystem consisting of a download service supplying digital audio files transferred from the original high-resolution audio masters, and a dedicated player with the ability to play back those files. Along with Apple’s best kept secret in their Mastered for iTunes program, Pono is an attempt to raise the bar in audio quality, a bar that has been continually lowered since just before the turn of the century thanks to the public’s acceptance of the quality impaired MP3 format, but can be traced by as far as the introduction of the CD.

Through the years, Young has always been a notorious stickler for audio quality, being one of the first artists to build his own personal studio based around hand-picked vintage audio gear, then later investing in Pacific Microsonics, which developed the HDCD audio technology that was acquired by Microsoft in 2000. He’s also been a big proponent of hi-res audio formats like DVD-Audio and most recently Blu-Ray.

When I first heard of Pono three years ago I was initially skeptical. Large digital files like the ones required for the hi-res audio backbone of Pono weren’t easy to deliver, and the public seemed just fine with the lower quality offered by MP3 and streaming services. Even last year, when Pono’s introduction was teased, success still seemed somewhat far-fetched with the wholesale movement towards the convenience of streaming music, one that continues in earnest today.

Today is a different day, however, and now I look at the Pono player/service in a somewhat different light. First of all let’s look at what Young and his cohorts have done right. Read more on Forbes.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.