Perpetual rock musician Neil Young recently announced his new music device and service Pono. He is presenting tonight at SXSW to share his vision for the future of high fidelity streaming music. Young has been vocal about current streaming music services and their inferior audio quality. Young has decided that instead of just moaning about it, he is out to fix the problem. Pono is expected to launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign later this week (March 15th).
In a posting on the Pono site Young declared;
There’s an awfully good chance you heard about a revolution we’re working on. Something that will significantly improve the way you get to hear and feel your favorite music.
Shocking you say? That perhaps the promise of “Perfect Sound Forever” propagated by the inventors of the Compact Disc was a bust? And that “CD Quality” promoted by the likes of iTunes and the creators of the MP3 was only an inkling of the flawed format they were hoping to emulate?
…Can you imagine? Your own personal time machine, to take you back to the place and time of the original musical event, and let you feel music in ways you’ve only felt seeing it live? We here at Pono are listening to it now and assure you, IT’S AMAZING!!!!
The hardware is set to price out at $399 with 128GB for the the PonoPlayer. PonoMusic is a full system that includes an online music store tacking industry heavy-weights like Apple’s ubiquitous iTunes. The PonoPlayer offers a digital-music listening experience that apparently “transcends” the limitations of a multi-function smartphones (read iPhone & Android phones). PonoMusic wants to offer the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels, curated and archived for discriminating PonoMusic customers.
The PonoPlayer was developed in collaboration with Ayre Acoustics – a company that has been developing award winning audio and video equipment for years. Whether or not Neil Young’s startup company can best current industry giants is an unknown but there definitely is a market out there for people who want the very best in audio quality – and Neil Young wants to provide it.
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