Trade Review: Week Six (1/2)

How Neil Young Plans to Save the Music Industry

Legendary rocker and entertainment investor Neil Young has a new mobile music device that could shift the entire industry’s quality standards for digital music. Heavily backed by media entrepreneurs and rock stars, Young’s device, Pono, has stirred up a media storm due to the device’s drastic difference in sound files on an iPod versus Young’s Pono. Young states that a music file on an iPod only captures 5% of the music quality from in a recording studio, whereas Pono far exceeds that amount and literally brings the music to your ears. Never a fan of a CDs or iPods, Young believes his new device will bring back the art in music and will hopefully give mobile music distributors a run for their money (Apple, Rhapsody, Amazon Music, Spotify etc). However, Young does not intend to try and make these music distributors go out of business; all Young wants to do is simply try to upgrade the playing field and force music distributors to increase the standards in the quality of music: “It's not that digital is bad or inferior, it's that the way it's being used isn't doing justice to the [music]” (Fitzgerald). Therefore, Pono is simply a passion project for Young, he is not in it for the financial benefits. The success of Pono will be measured in its ability to change consumer tastes and “whether consumers will stick to the cheap, easy-to-download music they've grown accustomed to over the years or if sound quality will win out” (Fitzgerald).

Pono’s biggest struggles will be its ability to shift user preferences of an iPod or their mobile device to the Pono device. Pono does not just convert songs to a higher quality file, the user will have to repurchase all of their favorite songs that have been adjusted to the Pono standard. Already an inhibiting factor, Pono will struggle in its ability for consumers to believe that the device they are purchasing will give them better music quality and let alone being worth the purchase. For a consumer to go out on a limb, purchase the Pono without even hearing the difference between their iPod is a major risk for consumers, especially when they are already content with an iPod. In addition, recent music streaming services offer unlimited music for minimal costs, which has set the Pono farther back in attracting customer, when it appears that quantity is in consumer preferences in the digital age as opposed to quality. In my opinion, Pono will not generate massive revenue because it will only attract die-hard music lovers, which could be exactly what Young wants. Young may want to generate enough momentum and backing from all musical enthusiasts to finally push Apple and music distributors alike to raise the quality of sound in musical content.