PONO’S DOWN BY THE XSTREAM

Neil Young’s Pono—the high-end streaming service that lacked fans and customers—is headed to its 2.0 version as a streaming service, Xstream. Big issue though: The Pono player and Xstream are not compatible with one another.

In the eight months since Pono’s download service shuttered, “I've been working with our small team to look for alternatives,” Young said in a post on Pono’s password-controlled website. “Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal. Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change.”

Young has had bad timing with this entire experiment. When he announced Pono in 2012, there was definitely an issue regarding the quality of MP3s, but by the time it launched—in 2015—there were a good number of options available. Pono’s download store shuttered last year after 18 months as streaming emerged as the top music delivery system yet Pono’s team continued to work on a download service before pushing into streaming.

In a Trump-like revelation, Young writes that running the online store was more difficult and costly than he had imagined. The key to his operation is to price hi-res streams the same as lower quality ones.

“Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality. That way quality is not an elitist thing. If high-resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality.”

People who own a Ponoplayer, however, can only play music downloaded onto the device as it has Wi-Fi capabilities. Irony may zap listener every time “Long My You Run” plays.