Neil Young to pull out from streaming services because of ‘bad quality’

Canadian singer-songwriter/high-fidelity music advocate/Pono Player creator, Neil Young, doesn’t want anything to do with streaming services. He’s announced that he plans to pull out of the likes of Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal. His reason: the sound quality is so bad that’s it’s doing a disservice to his fans. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t griping about the payment structure of these services either.

According to Young, “Streaming has ended for me. I hope this is ok for my fans. It’s not because of the money, although my share (like all the other artists) was dramatically reduced by bad deals made without my consent. It’s about sound quality. I don’t need my music to be devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution. I don’t feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans. It’s bad for my music.”

Source: Pitchfork | Via: Cult of Mac

Neil Young's PonoPlayer aims for the mobile hi-fi player market

The MP3 player market may be long dead at the iPod's feet and while the iPod itself is facing declining sales quarter after quarter, rockstar icon Neil Young's PonoPlayer is aiming for audiophiles who want to take their Hi-Fi mobile. Still in its conceptual stage and being shown off at SXSW before heading over to Kickstarter.

The $399 player will come with 128GB of storage and will offer the ability to play high-quality uncompressed audio. Judging from the renders above the PonoPlayer doesn't look particularly pocket friendly. There will be an accompanying music service called PonoMusic which will provide the high-quality audio files for sale.

“It’s about the music, real music,” Young says in a press release. “We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that.”

Source: Cult of Mac