Neil Young’s music service has no chance, says Troy Wolverton, technology columnist the Mercury News in San Jose, Calif.
“Oh Po-No…”
His article appeared in The Columbia Dispatch and he writes that: “Pono would have consumers step back in time. They would have to carry around separate phones and music players again. And they would pay $400 for that music device — which, in an increasingly connected world, is resolutely disconnected. The only way to get music on it is by transferring it from a computer over a USB cable.”
“You can’t buy a song when you’re away from your computer and you can’t stream it to the device. The company’s not even working on a smartphone application that might be able to offer Pono customers some connectivity or instant gratification.
“Because the PonoPlayer isn’t connected, it can’t access to your entire music collection or the universe of available music. Instead, it can only play what’s stored on it, which, if the songs are all in the high-resolution format it’s promoting, is only about 800 songs.”
Superfans are driving the entertainment business. Neil Young’s Pono digital musical player has raised more than $4 million from fans on Kickstarter. Yikes.
The lead in the article talks about Neil but the rest is a tale of how things fans are driving the things they love through these sorts of campaigns.
It’s been a big month for small projects on Kickstarter, writes Slate author Jon Nathanson. First a consortium of musicians and industry veterans, fronted by Neil Young, used the site to launch Pono, a digital music player and download service. Young and his partners set a fundraising goal of $800,000, to be reached within 35 days.
Instead, they met that goal in under a day, then broke $2.5 million in their first 60 hours. At the time of this writing, Pono has exceeded $4 million in pledges. (The campaign will run through April 15; Pono is scheduled to launch in October.)
A few days later, Warner Bros. released a Veronica Mars movie in theaters and online. The film grossed $2 million at only 291 theaters worldwide, with a healthy $6,945 per-screen average. The movie owed its existence to Kickstarter—Rob Thomas, creator of the original TV series, raised $5.7 million on Kickstarter last year to fund production of the feature.
überfans.
Nathanson writes: “But crowdfunding isn’t catering to the mainstream crowd. When 3 million of us pledged $480 million to Kickstarter projects in 2013, we didn’t establish any new industries or shake up any old ones. Instead, we identified ourselves as the early adopters: the hardcores, the überfans. We’re the kind of people who, in absence of Kickstarter, would have bought the special edition of a Veronica Mars DVD or paid extra for better seats at a Neil Young concert. We’re the kind of people who download all the value-added content in our favorite video games. When something’s labeled “collectible,” we’re the ones collecting it.”
As of Today Neil Young has been pledged almost $3 million for Pono! (with 8,980 backers!)
Forbes talks to Neil Young about he raised $2 million in two days on Kickstarter for his Pono project.
The Pono players will cost $399 and a projected $15-$25 per album price tag when the entire system goes live in October.
Staff writer Zack O’Malley Greenburg writes about the fact that, “at this very moment, he’s raising money for Pono–his long-awaited music player and service for high-quality audio files–at a rate of about $700 per minute via Kickstarter. Along with previous support from some outside investors, that will be more than enough to bring Pono to market this fall.”
“Thank goodness that we have the investors that we have, because we were able to get as far as we could” before launching the Kickstarter campaign, says Young. “Far enough to be able to show the product. … But we couldn’t get [corporate] investors to get interested in saving an art form.”
For Young, though, Pono is about much more than a Kickstarter campaign. He wants to create an entire iTunes-like ecosystem for high-quality digital files, complete with an answer to the iPod (the PonoPlayer) and the iTunes Store (the PonoMusic.com Store).
Pono’s business model is similar, too: revenues will be divided in a manner similar to the 70/30 split between content creators and Apple. Says Pono chief executive John Hamm: ”That’s the same deal we have. That’s the same deal everyone has.”
Neil Young’s music system baby “Pono” is now Live on Kickstarter, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform. The company’s mission is to help bring creative projects to life.
Righteous! (what Pono means in Hawaiian).
Woah! Check out the who’s-who of famous musicians talking up Pono in this video:
According to Kickstarter the project will only be funded if at least $800,000 is pledged by . The counter is clicking away. As of 8 p.m. on March 11 close to $700,000 has been raised by 2,133 investors who bought in. Minimum pledge was $1.
There are gifts for pledging. $5 pledgers get love and thanks! It goes up from there with T-shirts, posters, discounts on the Pono player, and artist series signatures Ponos from the likes of Willie Nelson,, Beck, CSN&Y, Tom Petty, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam and More.
Cost of the system is $399.
According to Neil: The record companies set their own digital music prices, label by label. High-resolution digital albums at PonoMusic.com are expected to cost between $14.99 -$24.99, and there may be exceptions. For this price you get the best quality digital music available anywhere, you own these albums forever – they don’t live only in the cloud, but also on your computer and backup disc, and you can play them anytime you wish on your PonoPlayer or other compatible devices.
We will also be offering many of your favorite individual songs. We’ll let you know the pricing soon.
About the shape:
“This triangular shape also has additional benefits: it can be held upright for one-hand operation or it can sit flat on your desktop or home stereo system. The display automatically rotates depending on the orientation of the device. But the best thing about this shape is that we were able to include the best sounding audio components with absolutely no compromises. The PonoPlayer will certainly be recognizable on your desk as the unique product it is – the world’s best sounding portable digital music player.”
It’s enough to make your head spin.
March 11, 2014 – (Santa Monica, CA.) – PonoMusic, a revolutionary movement conceived and founded by Neil Young with a mission to restore the soul of music, announced today that it is officially moving out of the R&D phase and is “open for business” with the launch of its Kickstarter campaign for thePonoPlayer.
Music veteran to unveil ‘highest resolution’ digital music service to take on Apple’s iTunes in SXSW keynote.
The Guardian writes that Neil Young will launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for his new PonoPlayer device on 15 March, with early buyers getting a discount on its planned $399 price.
The device will be supported by an online music downloads store called PonoMusic, which will sell files at a higher resolution than rivals like Apple’s iTunes.
“It’s about the music, real music. We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that. We couldn’t be more excited about bringing PonoMusic to the market,” said Young in a statement accompanying the announcement.
PonoMusic is working with US hardware firm Ayre Acoustics to produce the device, which will ship with 128GB of memory to store music, as well as accepting memory cards to boost its capacity. The company will also sell earphones and headphones from its website.
There are critics: Twitter is abuzz with jabs at the system and it’s design (Like a Toblerone candy car).
Writes http://www.makeuseof.com/service/web-based/: “The design and pricing have been heavily criticized on social media, but the bigger problem may be timing. The PonoPlayer is surely a little too late to market, with the days of dedicated personal media players having been succeeded by the all-encompassing smartphone.”
“In fact, it could be said that the PonoPlayer is about as relevant today as Neil Young.”
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
Neil Young’s music service has no chance, says Troy Wolverton, technology columnist the Mercury News in San Jose, Calif.
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