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Neil Young's huge online music archive opens to the public
Neil Young has been talking up his giant online archive for ages, but he's finally ready to deliver on his promises. The veteran Canadian rocker has launched the simply-titled Neil Young Archives, a website that includes all the media he has produced to date. And we do mean everything -- every song Young has made is available to stream for free (until June 30th 2018) through his Xstream Music service, including unreleased tracks.
Neil Young prepares a giant online archive for his music
Neil Young has come a long, long way since he dismissed streaming music services. The singer-songwriter has unveiled plans for a huge online archive of his work that, naturally, will tie into his streaming music service (Xstream Music). The focus is on a timeline that highlights his music from 1963 onward, complete with playback and a "Filing Cabinet" that offers video, memorabilia and other content attached to each song. Think of it as an album box set with very, very extensive liner notes.
Neil Young's Pono will launch an adaptive bitrate streaming service
Neil Young could be about to launch the most interesting streaming service to come along in a long while. No, really. Young recently spoke at length with Rolling Stone's Music Now podcast. While mostly discussing music, he also divulged his future plans for Pono. Launched in 2014 on Kickstarter as a high-resolution music player and download service, Pono captured the imagination of select audiophiles and not many others. Its total sales were in the tens of thousands as of last year, and its download service is in hiatus after the company running it was acquired. Now, Young's company is planning a streaming service. What's interesting about it is not the fact that it's promising to stream 192kHz, 24-bit resolution audio. Although it totally is. No, what's interesting is that it's promising high-quality adaptive bitrate streaming, which would be a first for a streaming service. See, when you load up your music app of choice, you typically pick a bitrate for downloads, and a bitrate for streaming. In Spotify, for example, you can choose from anywhere between 96kbps and 320kbps bitrates for streaming and downloads. What Pono is proposing is to do away with those designations.
Neil Young's Pono is having expansion and funding troubles
Neil Young says the Pono music player and its accompanying high-quality music service aren't doing too badly. He also admits, however, that things haven't been easy since he and his team managed to raise $6 million via Kickstarter. In a Facebook post, the music legend writes that the company still doesn't have a proper CEO since the last one left over a year ago. Young is the acting head honcho, but he'd prefer a "proven business leader" to take over the role. In addition, his team's efforts to expand to Canada, UK and Germany and open up www.ponomusic.com in those areas are being hampered by lack of funding -- clearly, that Kickstarter money is not nearly enough. Young says, however, that the store will open in those countries as soon as the company has the means to make it happen.
Neil Young says his music is too good for streaming services
Neil Young's been touting the merits of high-resolution audio for some time now, and he's had enough of streaming services' quality. The singer is pulling his music from those subscription-based libraries, a move fellow artist Prince made just days ago (Prince's tunes are still available on Tidal, of course). "I don't feel right allowing this to be sold to my fans," Young said. If you really need your fix of "My My, Hey Hey," he'd probably suggest you try Pono. He may rethink the decision when and if sound quality improves, but for now, he'd rather his music not be compromised by "the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution." I wonder what his thoughts are on Tidal's lossless tier. [Image credit: Photo by Tommaso Boddi/WireImage]
Neil Young's high-definition Pono Music is coming to cars
In addition to a triangle-shaped player, Neil Young's Pono effort also includes a music store for purchasing high-definition tunes. Here at CES, the man behind the project announced that he's teaming up with Harman to bring the higher-quality tracks to vehicles. Harman is a big name in infotainment and in-car audio, and it's already been working on solutions to make compressed audio sound better. Compared to other high-resolution players, Pono is competitively priced at $400, and if you opt in to the ecosystem, it looks like your next car could have the tech to handle all that music, too. If it has a Harman stereo installed, of course.
Finally, we heard what Neil Young's Pono music player sounds like
Herbie Hancock just tickled my ears. Not kidding. Adele did too. But Herbie tickled them better. No, this isn't some weird dream/nightmare. This is Pono. Go listen to Hancock's "Watermelon Man" now (link here). We'll wait. Back? What you just heard was a compressed version of Hancock's classic. What I just heard was not, and the difference is quite dramatic (even over reasonably priced headphones). Good thing too, given that Neil Young's quest with Pono has been to guide us away from the tyranny of the heavily compressed MP3, and steer us to the calm, warm waters of uncompressed audio. But, even though we've followed the Pono story quite closely, we learned a little more about the curious yellow prism today, too.
Daily Roundup: Twitter's redesign, Lightroom mobile for the iPad, and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Neil Young on digital audio: You're doing it wrong
When news first broke of Neil Young's plans to serve up high-resolution listening to audiophiles last year, we wondered how he'd get folks to splurge for a $400 player and re-buy their existing libraries. Sure, six to 30 times the resolution of MP3s looks great on paper, but will we really be able to hear the difference? The rock icon says yes, and it's because there's nothing that's currently available that even comes close to Pono. Young says that existing audio formats are unable to adequately present a full range of tones, so he "decided to create an ecosystem that provided exactly what the artist created." From the bits of info we've seen so far, the outfit claims people who love music and really want to be able to hear songs as those artists tracked them will be sold easily.
Neil Young's music player for audiophiles reaches Kickstarter on March 15th
We now know how Neil Young plans to make his dreams of high-quality digital music come true: crowdfunding. The artist's company PonoMusic is launching a Kickstarter campaign on March 15th that will let you reserve the PonoPlayer, Young's long-teased, audiophile-grade portable jukebox. The 128GB device will set you back a whopping $399 when it goes on sale (less with the Kickstarter discount), but its creators are promising audio fidelity worthy of the price tag. The hardware will offer natural-sounding digital filtering from Ayre Acoustics, ESS' most advanced digital-to-analog converter and "perfectly flat" frequency response with most any set of headphones. As you might expect, there will be a matching online store that delivers high-resolution tunes. The PonoMusic team hasn't said just when its media player will reach your pocket, but it shouldn't be too long before you're listening to a pristine version of Harvest while on the move.
Neil Young's Pono might launch early 2014, other details blurry like a hurricane
When Neil Young revealed Pono on the Letterman show, he mainly talked about how the high-fidelity music service would work. Now that Young and his team have announced an early 2014 target launch, it's looking more likely that Pono might actually happen. In a statement posted on Facebook, the team says it will launch both its online music store for high-quality audio and its player -- an updated version of the one shown on Letterman -- at the same time. Young claims the service can replicate the quality of music played in a studio, but we'll have to wait until next year to find out if it can actually deliver. Sadly, Team Pono isn't sharing other details, but we'll keep an eye out for future updates. [Image credit: CBS]
Ngmoco shutting down some titles March 31
Ngmoco announced on its website earlier this week that some of the game maker's biggest iOS titles, including We Rule, Godfinger and Touch Pets Dogs 2, are going to be shut down for good on March 31. The games will be off of Apple's App Store later this week on February 1, so no new users will be able to download them, and the servers for the games will go offline at the end of next month, effectively ending the games completely. Ngmoco didn't give a clear reason for the shutdowns, but it's not hard to guess: The company, once one of the biggest app developers on the App Store, has been fairly steadily transitioning over to Android titles in the past few years, and has seen a sharp decline in popularity on iOS. Not to mention that many of the figures who made the company so large, including former EA exec Neil Young, have left the company in recent days. In other words, it's finally game over for Ngmoco on iOS. Ngmoco was purchased by Japanese network DeNA a little while ago, and that company is still steadily trying to grow its own iOS sales and popularity. But Ngmoco as a brand is effectively done on the App Store, especially since these once-thriving games are shut down. One of the biggest names of the App Store's first generation is finally on its way out the door.
Neil Young leaves Ngmoco
Well it's the end of an era for one of iOS' first big companies. It was just about four years ago that I posted here in this very space that former EA executive Neil Young (no relation) was going to start up a company called ng:moco, and it was soon after that he published the breakout hit Rolando, following it up with the freemium title We Rule and eventually creating an empire (and changing the way a lot of people think about freemium games). Over the years, however, ngmoco has fallen from its peak in popularity, as it was acquired by the Japanese social gaming giant DeNA, and then decided to focus mostly on bringing cheap ports of that company's games over to Android instead. And now, Neil Young and cofounder Bob Stevenson have decided to leave the company, moving on to what they hope will be "their next adventure." They leave Clive Downie in the position of CEO with the company, another former EA VP who's been with ngmoco for a little while now. Ngmoco certainly inspired quite a bit of hate from players -- the company's focus on freemium games left more traditional titles like Rolando in the dust, and its acquisition of venerated Mac publisher Freeverse essentially resulted in the death of that classic brand. But ngmoco's popularity during the rise of iOS is also undeniable, and Young's ideas on freemium gaming have been adopted by many, many App Store game developers working today. It remains to be seen what Young's next project will be, but there's no question that, by starting up ngmoco, he's left an indelible mark on the short history of Apple's iOS platform already.
Neil Young's Pono music service wants to democratize high-quality audio (video)
Neil Young isn't shy when it comes to embracing new technology, something he put beyond question with his latest appearance on The Late show with David Letterman. The artist took the opportunity to reveal plans for his high-fidelity Pono music service. The aim is to tackle the poor quality in which he believes most people receive their music these days -- the humble MP3. Young's offering would comprise a three-pronged approach, including a music store with high-resolution recordings, a digital-to-analog style conversion technology, and portable hardware to listen to it all with. The simple intention is to offer music as it was originally intended to be heard, but at this time there's no detail as to what this actually entails (sorry specification fans). According to Rolling Stone, the big three labels are interested, and the goal is to unify, rather than diversify, the quality of recorded content. The Pono players (that yellow wedge you see above) will serve up your existing catalog, but you'll likely need to re-buy some of your collection if you want the holistic experience. With no cards fully on the table, we're at the ransom of Young's celebrity endorsements, which all claim that the benefits are tangible. Young, of course, says "You can't get better than this, this is what they do in the studio," but until we get some details, or ears on, everybody knows this is nowhere. [Image credit:CBS]
Daily Update for February 1, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Neil Young: Steve Jobs's death hindered Apple's high-def music efforts
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honoree Neil Young has been focusing on high-definition music for some time. At the News Corp. D: Dive Into Media event yesterday, Young said that he had been in discussions with Apple personnel -- including the late Steve Jobs -- about ways to improve digital music quality. Young and others had been in discussions with Apple about improved digital music file formats, ways to download the much larger files that would result, and creating devices that would play the high-def files. Digital music is currently "packaged" in either AAC or MP3 formats, which create small, easy distributed files, but also lose a lot of the nuances that are found in masters or live performances. High-def music files would be much larger than those currently in distribution, so downloading and storage would require more resources. Jobs was a rabid music fan his entire life and arguably had more impact on the digital music industry than any other executive. According to Young, however, "When he (Jobs) went home, he listened to vinyl." Young believes that without Steve's passion for music, Apple as a company has lost any ambition it may have had to rally behind high-def music. Musicians and recording industry execs might both get behind high-def music, since it would allow the industry to sell a higher-quality product at a premium price. Whether or not Apple will be at the forefront of the move to high-def music is up to the current executive team. [via The Mac Observer]
CE-Oh no he didn't!: NGP will be 'dead on arrival,' says ngmoco boss
In all honesty, you would expect the leader of a team concerned exclusively with producing games for smartphone platforms like iOS and Android to be dismissive of a new dedicated handheld console's chances, but it's still jarring to hear such a strident dismissal of the Sony NGP's chances. In an interview at GDC this year -- yes, the same place where we were treated to some very impressive demos of the NGP's performance -- ngmoco CEO Neil Young has expressed his belief that Sony's next PSP will be "dead on arrival." Claiming that the new portable will be incapable of competing with the rich ecosystems and affordable pricing models that smartphones now offer, Young says not even the crazy specs or PS3-like gaming will help the NGP survive. This echoes comments from Satoru Iwata last year saying that Apple, not Sony, is the "enemy of the future" for handheld consoles, though Young does close off on a positive note, saying that he sees brighter prospects for the 3DS thanks to Nintendo's rich collection of own-brand franchises and reserves of fan loyalty. So that's it, folks, better start selling those Sony shares while they're still worth something! Or not, it's up to you. [Thanks, Dominick]
LincVolt dies in a fire, is being rebuilt (video)
Warm up those phoenix references, because this LincVolt story is a perfect candidate. We've been following Neil Young's crazy retro next-gen conveyance since its inception in 2008, and sadly the news of late has not been good. Just a few weeks after the car (and its proprietor) made an appearance at SEMA it (the car) was left unattended while charging in a warehouse. The pearly white land yacht caught fire and nearly burned the place down, but enough was able to be salvaged for the team to start a rebuild, largely thanks to not one but two donor 1958 and '59 Lincoln Continentals that will be providing the necessary panels and parts to replace those destroyed in the fire. You can see the pre-fire car and some highlights from SEMA in the video below, though you'll have to wait until summer to see it looking that good again.
We Rule hits a million sessions in 24 hours
Ngmoco CEO Neil Young tweeted on the official account that We Rule has reached a million app sessions in a 24 hour period, which means we can probably call their big freemium experiment an early success. We've seen quite a few people talking about We Rule and their accounts in our comments and on Twitter, so it's definitely out there and being played. But of course we have no idea yet just how well it's doing in terms of turning over in-app purchases and making money. Still, if his talk at GDC is any indication, Young doesn't really care: their main goal is to get lots and lots of people using the app, and a million sessions in a day sounds like they've either got that or they're well on their way. Which means you will probably see lots more of this on the store in the near future -- Godfinger is due out soon from Ngmoco (it's currently in their Canadian App Store "beta"), and of course we've heard that they've got no less than six iPad titles planned, undoubtedly some due soon after the April 3rd launch. Ngmoco's freemium model had its naysayers when the company first revealed their plans, but it looks like they've all quieted down -- they're off playing We Rule.
Ngmoco's We Rule is live, but buggy
Ngmoco's We Rule is now available for download worldwide in the App Store -- it's the first ground-up game developed for their big freemium experiment, in which they give away a game and then support it with periodic updates, bringing in revenue with in-app purchases driven by social interaction and game design. I got to play the game at GDC a few weeks ago, and if you've ever played Facebook's Farmville, you'll find most of it very familiar -- you can plant crops, build a town, and earn money both by waiting in real time for investments to pay off, and trading/giving items among friends. Early App Store ratings are pretty good, and while the app doesn't seem to be charting yet, Ngmoco's Neil Young made it clear at GDC that this is a slow burn model -- they're not worried so much about charts as building up average daily users. Unfortunately, it seems the app suffered from some early bugs -- the game requires a 'net connection to run (like Farmville, it's very server oriented), and many users were having trouble connecting. Young wrote a blog post himself about the issues the other day; he says that it's primarily a server problem, and that the teams are working as quickly as they can to fix issues. Not unexpected -- Ngmoco's model calls for an "MVP" ("Minimum Viable Product") to be released on the App Store, so again, they're more interested in how the app does long term, not in the first few days. Other than the hiccups (which did result in a few bad App Store reviews and ratings), We Rule appears to be taking off carefully. We'll have to wait and see if the Farmville-style click-and-wait gameplay is enough to bring in those average daily users that Ngmoco is craving from the App Store.
