Neil Young sets 2014 launch for digital music service PONO

Neil Young’s always been a stickler for pristine recordings, and a general skeptic of today’s digital music formatting. So it’s natural that loss-heavy streaming services have bugged him.

For the last couple of years, Young has been flirting with the idea of a higher-quality streaming product. Now his new service PONO has an expected start date early next year.

“Hearing PONO for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theater on a sun-filled day,” he wrote on Facebook. “It takes you a second to adjust. Then you enter a bright reality, of wonderfully rendered detail.”

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The service will come with its own dedicated music player and online library (PONO works off of the artists’ original masters and specifically tailors them for this service). Young previously talked about a prototype for the service and player on David Letterman’s show.

Currently PONO has content deals with Warner Music, and is working out deals with Universal and Sony. “Pono” is the Hawaiian word for “righteous,” and it certainly sounds like Young believes he’s on the right side of recording history here.

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