Neil Young restores catalog to Apple Music, Spotify & other streaming services
Folk/rock artist Neil Young's back catalog has returned to streaming music services including Apple Music, Deezer, and Spotify, a report noted on Friday, a little over a year after the musician declared a moratorium over audio quality issues.
Young actually allowed his music on one service -- Tidal -- this April, Music Ally observed. While Tidal has a relatively small share of the on-demand streaming market, it does offer a unique "HiFi" tier which streams in lossless quality for people with enough bandwidth.
In July 2015 Young claimed that streaming had "ended" for him, since it offered "the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution."
Apart from his music Young is famous for his Pono brand, including the PonoPlayer and the PonoMusic download service. Both are geared towards maximum audio quality -- PonoMusic, however, has been offline since July, after its platform provider Omnifone was acquired. The buyer was initially suspected to be Apple, but rumors quickly disputed that notion.
The drop in income could help explain the sudden change in policy. Young has also softened his position on iTunes downloads though, allowing his live album Earth to be distributed that way despite claiming in April that it "does not fit" there since it "breaks all their [Apple's] rules" and "couldn't all really be heard that way anyway."
Young actually allowed his music on one service -- Tidal -- this April, Music Ally observed. While Tidal has a relatively small share of the on-demand streaming market, it does offer a unique "HiFi" tier which streams in lossless quality for people with enough bandwidth.
In July 2015 Young claimed that streaming had "ended" for him, since it offered "the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution."
Apart from his music Young is famous for his Pono brand, including the PonoPlayer and the PonoMusic download service. Both are geared towards maximum audio quality -- PonoMusic, however, has been offline since July, after its platform provider Omnifone was acquired. The buyer was initially suspected to be Apple, but rumors quickly disputed that notion.
The drop in income could help explain the sudden change in policy. Young has also softened his position on iTunes downloads though, allowing his live album Earth to be distributed that way despite claiming in April that it "does not fit" there since it "breaks all their [Apple's] rules" and "couldn't all really be heard that way anyway."
Comments
Streaming is worse that AM radio?
Perhaps what seals the fate of Pono though is in 2016 few to no people want a single function portable music device—irrespective of cost, name, shape or ecosystem.
Why not distribute a Pono App for iPhone, Android, etc and sell an audiophile DAC for each hardware platform?
Stick to what your strengths are: High Res Audio formats and High End DACs.
Audiophiles can continue to argue over Pono, lossless files, Blu-Ray Audio, 180-gram vinyl and whatnot, but that's always been a high-end niche market. What's changed is the much smaller difference between that stuff and what the average person can get out of the thing they're already carrying around in their pocket.
And then there are those people who love their vinyl because it's "analog", except that something like 93% of new vinyl is mastered from digital sources.
Years ago, I bought a standalone CD-R recorder that was capable of up to 96/24 recording and was very excited about it until I made my first test recordings and couldn't tell one iota of difference between that and standard Redbook (44.1/16) recordings.
Although I can tell the difference between Pandora streaming and copies of CD tracks that I've loaded lossless into iTunes. I was listening while riding my bike the other day and a track came on which I have in iTunes and I thought the iPhone had switched from Pandora to iTunes. The track didn't sound as good as it usually does and I thought to myself, "hmm...I think I've lost some high end hearing" and then I realized it was Pandora playing the track. Switching back to my version restored the fidelity.