Neil Young Rolls Out Pono

Promising a better digital music experience, Neil Young announced the launch of PonoMusic today.  But will music fans deep six their iPods in favor of a proprietary system?

A longtime critic of digitally compressed files such as MP3, Young has been talking up his PonoMusic plans for the past few years.  Consisting of an online music store located at PonoMusic.com and a portable player with 128GB of storage, PonoMusic promises “studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible.” 

Young isn’t alone in this venture.  While his ideas spearheaded the PonoMusic concept, the technology for the PonoPlayer was developed in conjunction with Ayre Acoustics out of Boulder, Colo.

“It’s about the music, real music,” Young said.  “We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does exactly that.  We couldn’t be more excited about bringing PonoMusic to the market.”

Although the PonoPlayer carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $399, PonoMusic will launch a KickStarter campaign offering units for pre-order at a discount beginning March 15.  The company will also sell earbud and headphone products deemed to enhance your PonoMusic listening.

But will it be enough to entice music fans to switch to another digital format?  Fans who began collecting music when vinyl was king have already switched out their long-playing albums for compact discs, then eventually ripped those CDs to build digital music libraries. Now comes PonoMusic with the lure of a better listening experience. What do you think?  Will you buy PonoMusic?

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