Rock star Neil Young wants to revolutionize the music industry with his new music download device Pono, which looks like a box of Toblerone chocolate. Norwegian enthusiast Haakon Olsen from Drammen, Norway, supports him.
Eamonn Forde in the British paper Guardian is one of the first who has listened to it. He says, “It delivers on its promises. I listened to tracks from Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Led Zeppelin II and Beck’s Morning Phase as well as Heart of Gold by Neil Young (of course), Contact by Daft Punk and Take Five by Dave Brubeck.”
Haakon Olsen, taking part in an exclusive ‘prototype’ dinner at a luxury hotel in New York agrees. So far only 30 Ponos, or Omnifone as it probably will be named, have been produced.
The audience is a niche (people who pay for music) within a niche (people who want digital music) within a niche (people who care about the sound quality), so it’s not going to be for the mass market, at least not for some time.
In the middle of November there were more than 1,7 million songs available. According to Pono World Times the library increases by one new song every second second.
Canadian rock legend Neil Young wants to challenge Apple, Sony and everybody else using the file format mp3 to play digital sound. Mp3 is easy to use and take up little space, but the sound suffers, according to music enthusiasts.
The educator Haakon Olsen from Drammen has been a fan of Neil Young since 1990 and followed him around the world, seen the artist perform 23 times in 11 countries. His description of Pono?
“It might be compared to watching a film with or without high-resolution,” he says.
Feature image (on top) from left to right: Neil’s manager Elliot Roberts, Haakon Olsen and Neil Young. (Copyright Haakon Olsen).