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

This article is more than 10 years old.

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 with equal resolution. 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, the beginnings of which 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 at the moment.

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.

  • They made their license deals with the major labels way in advance of the service introduction, unlike many other streaming and download services. This probably wasn’t too difficult in that the Pono downloads will go for a premium, and normal music downloads have already peaked, so the labels looked at this as somewhat of a replacement and weren't so much in a position to push a deal in their favor. 

Neil Young (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Second of all, the timing is right. Vinyl record sales are on an upsurge and the majority of buyers are in the 18 to 25 year old range. They’re being exposed to high-quality music production for the first time via vinyl, and will be prime candidates for a more portable version of the experience. Pono is the perfect fit.

Pono only needs a small segment of the market. Whenever a new format is introduced, its creators and investors many times foolishly eye the entire market for adoption. The fact of the matter is that according to an article written in Billboard Magazine by music industry mover and shaker Tommy Silverman in 2007, only 10 to 15% is required to make a new format succeed and become another significant revenue stream for the industry. Just on a general feel for the business, I’d say that 10% may be the upper limit of potential market penetration, but that’s still enough for Pono, the record labels, the artists and songwriters all to feel good about it.

  • Pono Music’s Kickstarter campaign is actually brilliant. It’s not so much about raising cash for operations or marketing as it is about pre-orders and social buzz. When I last checked, there were well over 2,000 playback units that had been ordered that resulted in raising over $900,000, outdistancing its goal of $800k with 34 days left to go in the campaign. This was keyed by offering a number of “Artist Signature” versions signed by artists like Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam and Crosby, Stills & Nash, among others. Like I said, brilliant.
  • Another thing that Pono did right was ceding the audio electronics design to the highly-regarded Ayre Acoustics. This ensures that the audio output of the playback devices matches the resolution required to maximize the experience presented by the high-resolution audio files.

But speaking of audio quality, here’s what the company missed. It doesn’t supply a set of comparable quality headphones or earbuds with the device. Although the company claims that you can hear the difference on anything you might have lying around, why take the chance? If I were Pono I’d be doing a deal to include a high-quality collapsible pair of headphones from a company like AKG, Sennheiser or Audio-Technica for inclusion with the purchase, or at least have it as a readily available accessory.

We’ve seen in the past what such a seemingly small addition like an earpiece can do to the acceptance of a device. If you go back to the 1960s when the first portable transistor radios were introduced, what really put that device over the top was the fact that you could listen to it anywhere and in any situation (many of us kids of time can remember pretending to be asleep in your bed while listening discretely to the radio hidden under the pillow and the earbud in your pillow ear). The same thing happened with the iPod and iPhone, as the earpiece was made to sound better out of the box, and it was so distinctive that everyone knew what brand you were listening to.

Being an audio and tech guy myself, I applaud Neil Young and the Pono team for their efforts. It’s indeed a noble cause to keep high-quality audio alive. There’s no doubt that when people are exposed to it, they can be quickly converted with the right demonstration. I do hope that the company keeps its expectations in the proper perspective, and remembers how valuable a simple earpiece can be.