Neil Young's New Music Format Ready To Launch

Pono is the new music format that Young has been working on for many years. His intention is to retain the original audio fidelity of the analog recording in a digital format, and hopefully revolutionise the way that people listen to and appreciate digital music.

Rolling Stone reports that he already has the big three record labels - Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music - on board with his idea and that WMG has already converted its library of 8,000 album titles to high-resolution, 192kHz/24-bit sound.

The new format will take on Apple in the digital music sphere, although Young reveals that he tried to work with Apple prior to Steve Jobs' death. "I have consistently reached out to try to assist Apple with true audio quality, and I have even shared my high-resolution masters with them," Young writes in his autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace.

Early in 2013 Pono will release a line of portable players, a music-download service and digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions.

Rolling Stone says that Young let Red Hot Chili Peppers Anthony Kiedis and Flea hear his Pono system in action last year and they were certainly impressed.

Says Flea, "It's not like some vague thing that you need dogs' ears to hear. It's a drastic difference."

(Rolling Stone)