Neil Young wants to start a revolution against the MP3, against the CD, poorly made vinyl, and poor audio quality in general. He wants people to hear the music the way it was made. So at SXSW, Young introduced Pono. In Hawaiian, the word means righteous or goodness. For the world of sound it’s an audio player that Young says he’s been working on for 2 1/2 years, one that’s capable of playing music at the same quality at which it was recorded.
Neil Young has long complained about the quality of digital music formats. Now he’s doing something about it — and he’s getting help from some friends. Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Tom Petty and Sting were among the artists who joined Young in a video to promote a Kickstarter campaign for Pono, a digital music service and device designed to “bring the highest-quality digital music” to consumers, according to its press announcement. Young himself was at Austin’s SXSW event to demonstrate the service.
