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When Neil Young revealed Pono on the Letterman show, he mainly talked about how the high-fidelity music service would work. Now that Young and his team have announced an early 2014 target launch, it’s looking more likely that Pono might actually happen. In a statement posted on Facebook, the team says it will launch both its online music store for high-quality audio and its player — an updated version of the one shown on Letterman — at the same time. Young claims the service can replicate the quality of music played in a studio, but we’ll have to wait until next year to find out if it can actually deliver. Sadly, Team Pono isn’t sharing other details, but we’ll keep an eye out for future updates.

[Image credit: CBS]

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Via: Evolver.fm

Source: Pono (Facebook)

So, what were we doing? Oh yeah, blogging — fortunately, Focus@Will understands our inability to concentrate 100 percent of the time during an eight hour day, and is now going into public beta with a music service app designed to make things better. The company says it helps productivity by perking up your limbic system at specific intervals with “scientifically and artistically curated” music that keeps you from pondering “danger, food, sex or shiny things” instead of working. You can choose from eight music categories like classical, cinematic or “alpha chill,” including many new compositions created since the private beta launched in December. The company’s also refined its “focus genome” algorithms since then, which help choose tunes based on user feedback in a similar manner to Pandora’s Music Genome Project. If you’re in the US, you can grab the cross-platform HTML5 app now at the source below, with iOS and Android apps coming soon. Still with us? Good.

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Source: Focus@Will

Neil Young isn’t shy when it comes to embracing new technology, something he put beyond question with his latest appearance on The Late show with David Letterman. The artist took the opportunity to reveal plans for his high-fidelity Pono music service. The aim is to tackle the poor quality in which he believes most people receive their music these days — the humble MP3. Young’s offering would comprise a three-pronged approach, including a music store with high-resolution recordings, a digital-to-analog style conversion technology, and portable hardware to listen to it all with. The simple intention is to offer music as it was originally intended to be heard, but at this time there’s no detail as to what this actually entails (sorry specification fans).

According to Rolling Stone, the big three labels are interested, and the goal is to unify, rather than diversify, the quality of recorded content. The Pono players (that yellow wedge you see above) will serve up your existing catalog, but you’ll likely need to re-buy some of your collection if you want the holistic experience. With no cards fully on the table, we’re at the ransom of Young’s celebrity endorsements, which all claim that the benefits are tangible. Young, of course, says “You can’t get better than this, this is what they do in the studio,” but until we get some details, or ears on, everybody knows this is nowhere.

[Image credit:CBS]

Continue reading Neil Young’s Pono music service wants to democratize high-quality audio (video)

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video

Neil Young’s Pono music service wants to democratize high-quality audio (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 07:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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