Pono Boy
6th Street, Austin, TX - SXSW '14
Legendary singer/songwriter Neil Young has long complained about the poor
audio quality of MP3 players like the iPod and the long-gone Microsoft Zune. Last
month he backed up his words, launching PonoMusic "a revolutionary movement
to bring the highest-quality digital music to discerning, passionate consumers,
who wish to experience music the way the artists intended, with emotion, detail
and power intact." Young says "It's about the music, real music. We want to move
digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does exactly that."
PonoMusic includes both an online music store (PonoMusic.com) and a playback device (The PonoPlayer). Time will tell whether regular consumers will care
about the sound quality of an uncompressed music file on a portable music player
that doesn't include a phone. Sure there are audio enthusiasts out there that will
embrace the Pono concept. But like us, maybe they just prefer old fashioned vinyl.
04•2014
Positively 6th Street
Powering through nine days of sensory overload that is
SXSW last month, there were a number of highlights across
he multi-faceted conf