Pono Update From Neil Young

[The Computer Audiophile]

Here is the text of Neil's "hidden" update to the Pono community.

 

 

"It’s time to talk about Pono and the initiative we all started. As you know, together we’ve been fighting a battle to bring high quality music back to the world that’s become used to mediocre, hollowed-out files. The cause seemed to be a win-win for everyone. The artists would allow their fans to hear what they hear in the studios, and the music lovers would hear the music the best it could be. This cause has been something I’ve written and talked about for over 20 years.  I cared and I assumed that most of the world would care.

 

It’s been almost five years since we kicked off the campaign at SXSW to offer a player and download content that could fulfill my dream of bringing to you a music experience unlike any other for the cost. Thanks to our supporters on Kickstarter, the follow-on customers and some very good friends that supported the effort, we delivered on that promise. Our player won best digital portable product of the year from Stereophile Magazine, and we offered some of the best high resolution content to be found anywhere.  We sold tens of thousands of players, every unit that we made. Thanks for that!

 

But, despite that success, I was not satisfied. I had to put up with lots of criticism for the high cost of music delivered in the way all music should be provided, at full resolution and not hollowed out. I had no control over the pricing, but I was the one that felt the criticism, because I was the face of it. And I pretty much agreed with the criticism. Music should not be priced this way.

 

Last year when Omnifone, our download store partner, was bought and shut down with no notice by Apple, we began work with another company to build the same download store. But the more we worked on it, the more we realized how difficult it would be to recreate what we had and how costly it was to run it: to deliver the Pono promise, meaning you’d never have to buy the same album again if was released at a higher quality; the ability to access just high res music, and not the same performances at lower quality, and the ability to do special sales. Each of these features was expensive to implement.

 

I also realized that just bringing back the store was not enough. While there was a dedicated audience, I could not in good conscience continue to justify the higher costs. When it comes to high res, the record industry is still broken.  The industry was such that even when I wanted to remaster some of the great performances from my artist friends at high res, Pono had to pay thousands of dollars for each recording, with little expectation of getting the money back. Record companies believe they should charge a premium for high res recordings and conversely, I believe all music should cost the same, regardless of the technology used.

 

As you might imagine, I found it difficult to raise more money for this model: delivering quality music at a premium price to a limited audience that felt they were being taken advantage of with the high costs.

 

So now, sadly with Pono gone, for more than eight months I’ve been working with our small team to look for alternatives. Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal.

 

That effort has led to a technology developed by Orastream, a small company in Singapore that we’ve been working with. Together we created Xstream, the next generation of streaming, an adaptive streaming service that changes with available bandwidth. It is absolutely amazing because it is capable of complete high resolution playback. Unlike all other streaming services that are limited to playing at a single low or moderate resolution, Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change. It’s a single high resolution bit-perfect file that essentially compresses as needed to never stop playing. As a result, it always sounds better than the other streaming services and it never stops or buffers like other higher res services.  When you play it at home with WiFi it can play all established low and high resolutions, including the highest, and thousands more levels of resolution in between. When you are in your car with poor cellular it might play better than an existing low res service, but at a location where robust wifi is available Xstream supports high resolution listening. Xstream is one file, streaming for all with 15,000 seamlessly changing levels of playback quality.

 

So, this is what we’ve been working on. But one of my conditions is that it should not have a premium price. I’ve insisted that there be no premium price for this service. Pono tried that with downloads and it’s not a good model for customers. And I’ve told the labels it’s not a good model for them to charge a premium for music the way it was meant to be heard. I firmly believe that music is in trouble because you can’t hear it the way it is created unless you pay a premium. No one gets to hear the real deal, so the magic of music is compromised by limited technology.

 

Good sounding music is not a premium. All songs should cost the same, regardless of digital resolution. Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality. That way quality is not an elitist thing. If high resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality. Record companies will ultimately lose more money by not exposing the true beauty of their music to the masses. Remember, all music is created to sound great and the record labels are the one’s deciding to not offer that at the normal price. The magic of music should be presented by the stewards of that music at a normal price. Let listeners decide on the quality they want to purchase without pricing constraints.

 

I’ve been meeting with and speaking with the labels, potential partners such as the carriers, and other potential investors. For many it’s a difficult sell. There are already streaming services, some doing well and others not. While there’s nothing as good as Xstream, or as flexible and adaptive, it’s still proven a difficult sell for companies to invest in.

 

So, in my experience, today’s broken music industry continues to make major mistakes, but we are still trying. Bringing back the magic of great sound matters to the music of the world.

 

Thank you all very much for supporting Pono and quality audio. Thanks to everyone who is or was associated with Pono, especially the customers who supported us. Thanks to Charlie Hansen and Ayre Acoustics for the great PonoPlayer. It has been a labor of love. I want you to know that I’m still trying to make the case for bringing you the best music possible, at a reasonable price, the same message we brought to you five years ago. I don’t know whether we will succeed, but it’s still as important to us as it ever was.

 

Thankfully, for those of my audience who care and want to hear all the music, every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive. Check it out. We will be announcing it very soon."

 

Neil Young

[cjf]

Its a shame really, I liked the Pono music store's variety but it sounds like it may be more prudent for them to bow out gracefully given the opposition being presented to them from the money grubbing record companies who have basically strangled the industry with their greed.

 

The sad truth is that no one but us audiophiles care. We make up but a small speck on map of potential customers to the record companies and thus are easily swiped away like a piece of lint that has fallen on the bean counters calculator screen obstructing the view of their bottom line numbers

[Ralf11]

how much will Xstream cost is the real question - less than 29 Euros a month would be a real smart idea

[The Computer Audiophile]

I get the sense that Xstream will never launch. 

[jiminlogansquare]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I get the sense that Xstream will never launch. 

[deleted by user]

[Ralf11]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I get the sense that Xstream will never launch. 

 

better to burn out than to fade away

[firedog]

6 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I get the sense that Xstream will never launch. 

I admire NY for trying, can't imagine the labels choosing long term health of the industry over short term profits. Doubt there is any chance for this. 

Wonder how much NY will charge to stream his own catalog from his own site?

[k-man]

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 I cared and I assumed that most of the world would care

But the Pono ecosystem was geared towards the audiophile - 24/192, balanced circuitry was inevitably going to get lost on music lovers.

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

We sold tens of thousands of players, every unit that we made.

Streaming was the path to reach to millions. I'll probably mention MQA later.

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Last year when Omnifone, our download store partner, was bought and shut down with no notice by Apple

Ah, that might explain those rumours of Neil Young working with Apple.

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

As you might imagine, I found it difficult to raise more money for this model: delivering quality music at a premium price to a limited audience that felt they were being taken advantage of with the high costs.

I thought this was what the Kickstarter campaign was all about! 

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Let listeners decide on the quality they want to purchase without pricing constraints.

Sorry NY, but your 'golden ears' on what hi-res is influenced you to defect from Meridian/MQA. Bad call. 

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Thank you all very much for supporting Pono and quality audio. Thanks to everyone who is or was associated with Pono, especially the customers who supported us. Thanks to Charlie Hansen and Ayre Acoustics for the great PonoPlayer.

Even though I own a piece of Ayre technology, I still highly regret purchasing one. With all the promises of influencing the record industry, I felt badly let down. A few NY albums playing with a blue light glow is not going to help me change that. I really can't help wonder the potential HAD Pono collaborated with Meridian.

I'm not an avid supporter of MQA technology, but I'm more optimistic as long as it stays tied to a big name streaming platform.

 

16 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive

Nope, I agree with Chris. 

[new_media]

13 hours ago, k-man said:

Even though I own a piece of Ayre technology, I still highly regret purchasing one. With all the promises of influencing the record industry, I felt badly let down. A few NY albums playing with a blue light glow is not going to help me change that. I really can't help wonder the potential HAD Pono collaborated with Meridian.

I'm not an avid supporter of MQA technology, but I'm more optimistic as long as it stays tied to a big name streaming platform.

 

While I am disappointed that the Pono ecosystems never caught on, I still use my Limited Edition Pono Player from the Kickstarter campaign regularly, and I think it's a great DAP.

 

As a matter of fact, after reading this statement from Neil, I ordered a backup Pono Player from Amazon for when my current player inevitably gives up the ghost. As I type this, they only have 2 of the yellow players left, and I assume they are unlikely to get anymore.

 

It's too bad that the Pono Music Store didn't survive, but I'm pretty regularly binding high-res albums now from Qobuz and 7digital, which I assume are from exactly the same masters.

[DaQi]

Still using my limited edition player and enjoy the sound from it when I am travelling. I am looking for a replacement for when it inevitably dies. Didn't buy much from the Pono music store as it was over priced and available elsewhere for less. Good luck to NY with his new venture but I am just not into streaming so doubt I will buy into it. As Chris mentions I doubt it will launch as there just doesn't seem to be the support out there. 

[OraStream]

"Thankfully, for those of my audience who care and want to hear all the music, every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive." 

 

....why should there be any doubt that Neil Young would be able to make his own releases available soon?

[realhifi]

How did they not see that streaming was the future?  Odd business decisions made one after another.

 

 

[Hrunga Zmuda]

Let's ignore the fact that Neil is wrong about Apple. They in fact bought the technology and hired staff after the demise of Omnifone, they in no way "shut it down" because they never bought it.

 

That out of the way, I've been a big supporter of Pono. And have been very patient. (And I'm still waiting for a few upgrades in resolution for albums I bought.) But of course this was a risky effort. So I'm pretty much done with Pono itself. And I don't think I'll go with their streaming service if they ever get it off the ground. On top of that, it's not likely that MQA is ever going to be a part of the ecosystem, and now that it is becoming a thing that actually exists, and seems to be gathering steam, I'm about to jump to a media player that has a more logical shape, and will natively support MQA.

 

It's been a fun ride, but the half-baked products so far from Pono were a great dream, and actually worked as advertised (ignoring the horrible interface that was ridiculously bad). it's been fun. Good luck and thanks for all the fish. Keep on rocking in America! (Until a certain cretin shuts it down.)

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, Hrunga Zmuda said:

Let's ignore the fact that Neil is wrong about Apple. They in fact bought the technology and hired staff after the demise of Omnifone, they in no way "shut it down" because they never bought it.

 

People directly involved in this told me that Apple cut Omnifone's customers off without notice. Perhaps the fact that Apple purchased the tech and took employees away, lead to this. I'm really not sure. 

[beetlemania]

So, no more Pono music store? NY never explicitly wrote that. I really miss it. They had a far larger and selection and, generally, better prices than HDT.

 

Shit. I'm also gonna be sad when my Pono Player eventually dies and I can't get a new one.

[#Yoda#]

1 hour ago, beetlemania said:

So, no more Pono music store? NY never explicitly wrote that. I really miss it. They had a far larger and selection and, generally, better prices than HDT.

 

Shit. I'm also gonna be sad when my Pono Player eventually dies and I can't get a new one.

It is quite sure that the PonoMusic Store, as we know it, will never be reopened again. I think, the Pono Promise is one of the main reasons for this, because this promise implicates a not calculable financial risk and the Labels has shown no effort to share this idea.

Regarding a statement of Phil Baker in the Pono Community Xstream will offer beside the streaming service a download option as well. I'm curious about their catalogue.

 

You can still buy a "backup" player if you'd feel the need, but there will be no PonoPlayer 2.0.

It is another story, if we will see a new DAP designed by Ayre Acoustics, no matter what brand. Charles Hansen is very proud of what he and his team has created with the circuit design for the PonoPlayer. I hope and be very optimistic that Ayre will not bury their experience with still one of the best sounding DAPs in the market.

[beetlemania]

4 hours ago, #Yoda# said:

It is quite sure that the PonoMusic Store, as we know it, will never be reopened again.

This saddens me. I guess the upside was that they forced HDT into more competitive pricing but I'll miss the huge catalog.

 

I wonder if Ayre will market their own DAP at some point. I imagine Charles Hansen would want it made in the US but I don't think they can add that to their factory. And could they price it competitively?

 

Well, shit!

[firedog]

On 28 April 2017 at 5:10 PM, OraStream said:

"Thankfully, for those of my audience who care and want to hear all the music, every recording I have ever released will soon be available in Xstream high resolution quality at my complete online archive." 

 

....why should there be any doubt that Neil Young would be able to make his own releases available soon?

Um, because it is rare that artists own the rights to their own product. Usually, the music is owned by a label that can do whatever it wants with the "product".

[firedog]

I liked the Pono store because they had a good selection and sometimes low prices. I haven't seen any impact on HDT, they pretty much have raised their prices across the board starting months ago.

Occasional albums on sale and discount codes, but list prices are very high.

[Solstice380]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

I liked the Pono store because they had a good selection and sometimes low prices. I haven't seen any impact on HDT, they pretty much have raised their prices across the board starting months ago.

Occasional albums on sale and discount codes, but list prices are very high.

 

Agree completely!

[Jud]

19 hours ago, beetlemania said:

Shit. I'm also gonna be sad when my Pono Player eventually dies and I can't get a new one.

 

'Sokay, I'm getting a Geek Wave that'll replace my Pono when it dies, and I'm sure LH Labs will thrive and support it forever!

[beetlemania]

Interesting how few responses on this topic. Hardly anybody gives a shit that the biggest download catalog is kaput? Is everybody streaming now? I guess my Luddite tendencies are gonna leave me behind yet again . . .

 

Meanwhile, with all the changes in technology and the internet, why are the labels still in control of anything? What is to stop the artists from just making downloads available from their own website? They would surely make MUCH more money. Instead of $0.25 per CD they get the whole thing, right (well, most would need an IT specialist to set up their webpage)?

[beetlemania]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

I liked the Pono store because they had a good selection and sometimes low prices. I haven't seen any impact on HDT, they pretty much have raised their prices across the board starting months ago.

Occasional albums on sale and discount codes, but list prices are very high.

I guess I'm giving credit to HDT because they have 15-20% off almost all the time now. Yes, the prices are very high but I pretty much only buy when they have a storewide sale. This seems to happen at least once every month and I get sub-category sale promotions once or twice every week. I think it's still more expensive than Pono was but cheaper than before Pono.

[Jud]

If you look around you can often get downloads cheaper than HDT, even on sale, at 7digital (Pono Store's source), Prostudiomasters, a band's own site or Bandcamp page, Super Hi-Rez, and lots of others.  Just Google "[artist name] flac," and avoid the pirate/torrent/ad-malware sites like Israbox.  And that's just rock and world music.  For classical and jazz there are plenty of others like Channel Classics/NativeDSD, Presto Classical, etc.

[Jud]

29 minutes ago, Jud said:

If you look around you can often get downloads cheaper than HDT, even on sale, at 7digital (Pono Store's source), Prostudiomasters, a band's own site or Bandcamp page, Super Hi-Rez, and lots of others.  Just Google "[artist name] flac," and avoid the pirate/torrent/ad-malware sites like Israbox.  And that's just rock and world music.  For classical and jazz there are plenty of others like Channel Classics/NativeDSD, Presto Classical, etc.

 

I should also mention that Nonesuch has downloads for interesting artists in many genres.