Neil Young at Farm Aid 2015 in Chicago. Photo by Laurie Fanelli
Neil Young is taking another stab at the high-quality music market. The legendary singer and activist, who debuted his Pono Music company to mixed reviews in 2015, is back with his latest venture, promising high-resolution streaming through a hopeful new service called Xstream.
Young’s Pono service, which raised over $6.2 million dollars via Kickstarter in 2014, reportedly went under in July of last year. The service — criticized for being “niche” and “elitist” — suffered due to the high costs of its player ($399) as well as its files (albums costs $20-$30 and tracks cost $1.99-$2.99).
The veteran rocker hopes to take what he’s learned from Pono and apply it to Xstream to offer customers a service that’s both high-quality and fairly priced. He expressed his hopes to get things right with his new service — a collaboration with Singapore firm Orastream — in a post on Pono’s website (via CBC):
“For more than eight months, I’ve been working with our small team to look for alternatives. 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. It’s a single high-resolution bit-perfect file that essentially compresses as needed to never stop playing.”
Although Pono never really took off, Young still speaks highly of the service, through which he learned that “good sounding music is not a premium.” Thus, his current view, that “all songs should cost the same regardless of digital resolution,” has helped shape Xstream. “Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality,” states Young. “If high-resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality.”
Xstream’s pricing has not yet been revealed.