PonoMusic

About PonoMusic

PonoMusic emerged in 2012, founded by musician Neil Young with a mission to counteract the perceived degradation of audio quality in the age of compressed digital music. Young, a long-time advocate for superior sound, partnered with Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Hamm, who initially served as CEO, to build an ecosystem for high-resolution audio. The venture was born from Young's conviction that listeners were missing the richness and nuance of original studio recordings, a sentiment he detailed in his book "Waging Heavy Peace". His goal was to "rescue the art form" he had practiced for decades, presenting songs as they were first heard during their creation.

The company's business model revolved around a two-pronged approach: the sale of a dedicated portable music player, the PonoPlayer, and a corresponding online music store, PonoMusic.com, which sold high-resolution downloadable music. This ecosystem was designed for music enthusiasts and audiophiles who valued fidelity over the convenience of compressed formats like MP3. The PonoPlayer, developed in collaboration with high-end audio engineering company Ayre Acoustics, was a purpose-built device designed for optimal playback of high-resolution audio files. Priced at $399, it featured 64GB of internal memory, expandable via a microSD card, and was engineered to store between 100 to 500 high-resolution albums. The online store offered music in the FLAC audio format, which the company referred to as the Pono audio format, sourced from major and independent labels.

PonoMusic garnered significant initial attention and support, launching a remarkably successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in March 2014. The campaign blew past its $800,000 goal in a single day, ultimately raising over $6.2 million from more than 18,000 backers, demonstrating a clear market interest in higher-quality digital music. This success allowed the company to begin production, with players shipping to backers in late 2014 and to the general public in early 2015. However, the company faced significant challenges. In mid-2016, the PonoMusic store was forced to shut down after its content partner, Omnifone, was acquired and its services terminated. Despite plans to transition to a new provider, 7digital, the store never returned to full operation. By April 2017, the Pono project was officially discontinued, with subsequent plans for a streaming service called "Xstream" that never materialized.