The sound of music: Neil Young ’s crusade
Neil Young has never been bashful about telling us what he thinks. He voiced his disdain for corporate sellouts on 1988’s This Note’s For You. And on a more serious note, he decried the Kent State shootings more than four decades ago with the song Ohio.
Music lovers are lucky to have Young, an iconoclast with serious bona fides, on their side in perhaps a last gasp effort save the sound of music.
The 68-year-old singer-songwriter has an inventive streak. He spent the last few years investing time and money in a new high-resolution music ecosystem called PonoMusic. He came here last week to South By Southwest to publicly announce the project’s launch on Kickstarter.
I met Young for the first time about noon last Tuesday, because I had been lucky enough to win the job of interviewing Young onstage later in the day.
Young said he planned to speak extemporaneously for a bit, then cue a video explaining the PonoMusic player and system and featuring some musicians’ responses after listening to it. “I may talk for five minutes, I may talk for 25 minutes,” he told me. “I don’t know.”
After that, he and I would return to the stage and I’d ask him some questions. Seated next to him on stage, I asked if he was surprised that consumers have embraced HDTVs and high-def video but were settling for lower quality music.
“Consumers are not in control. The tech companies are in control,” he replied. “I want to bring music to where it can be. I don’t want to bring it back, I want to bring it forward to where it can be. It’s the 21st century. Why should we be suffering through inferior quality?”
And he has struck a chord. In less than a week, the PonoMusic project has taken in nearly $4 million on Kickstarter. Thousands of people — including me — plunked down $400 to reserve a PonoPlayer that’s expected to come out in October.
There are high-res music files available now from companies such as Acoustic Sounds and HD Tracks. Sony recently brought to market some new high-res music players and speakers for the
“I want to bring music to where it can be. ... It’s the 21st century. Why should we be suffering through inferior quality?”
Neil Young
home, joining portable players from iriver already in the marketplace.
But the drive for bettersounding music needs a champion to rally music lovers and musicians alike. Young ’s crusade has caught the attention of other artists. Drummer Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, which performed at SXSW, told me “it is nice to have someone fighting for us like Neil who believes in the highest possible sound quality, because you used to get that on vinyl.”
Cameron echoed Young ’s statement that there’s no reason to stick with small music files such as MP3s, because technology has improved to the point that more data-rich formats can deliver studio-quality sound while retaining the convenience of digital downloads.
I checked in one more time with Young to see whether he’d be playing any music while in Austin. No, he said. “I brought a guitar, but if I play any, it would only be in my room for myself.”
His PonoMusic project was the sole focus of this trip. And all the notes he hit were for you, the listener.