Neil Young Hopes to Revolutionize Listening Experience with New Technology

American Songwriter tells the story of Pono — a new technology championed by rock/songwriting legend Neil Young — to give music listeners an experience that more resembles an authentic, live performance. Young’s hope is to “revive the magic that has been squeezed out of digital music.”

Pono applies what Young calls an “underwater listening experience.”

On Tuesday, Neil Young launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for Pono, his long-awaited digital music service and player. Young hopes his new invention will put and end to the inferior sound quality of the common CD and MP3. Fans and investors ponied up $800,000 to aid Young’s cause in a mere ten hours.

A video on his Kickstarter page of famous musicians waxing poetic about the new format undoubtedly helped the cause, and may turn you into an early believer.

Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Sting, Gillian Welch, Dave Grohl, Elvis Costello, Stephen Stills, David Crosby and Eddie Vedder are among the converts who appear to tout the power of Pono.

And here’s more on Pono’s mission:

Pono’s mission is to provide the best possible listening experience of your favorite music. We want to be very clear that PonoMusic is not a new audio file format or standard. PonoMusic is an end-to-end ecosystem for music lovers to get access to and enjoy their favorite music exactly as the artist created it, at the recording resolution they chose in the studio. We offer PonoMusic customers the highest resolution digital music available. PonoMusic is more than just a high-resolution music store and player; it is a grassroots movement to keep the heart of music beating. PonoMusic aims to preserve the feeling, spirit, and emotion that the artists put in their original studio recordings.