Pono: Crazy Horse Bolts

The digital music store connected to Neil Young’s pricey and strange looking ‘high end’ Pono Player has launched- the bad news is that you’ll need more than a heart of gold to shop there!

To complement the $399 (approx. £264) price tag of the Pono Player device, the PonoMusic World Store went live this week, with album prices ranging from $17.99 (just under £12) (for Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA) to over $27 (just under £18). Young’s own back catalogue is of course on there and he is currently the most popular artist on the store, followed by Miles Davis, whose ‘Kind of Blue’ is the most popular album.

Now who said that this would only appeal to ageing, hi fidelity high-end audio obsessives with more money than sense? Pono: where the £50 man can seek shelter from the storm following the closure of the local record shop.

As previously reported Pono offers albums as superior quality ‘high end’ FLAC files that it refers to as ‘album audio resolution’. A campaign to produce the device swiftly exceeded all of its crowd funding targets when announced by Young in 2012, going on to become the third most funded project in the history of Kickstarter.

Stereogum’s take on Pono is well worth a read and you can also find out more and purchase several high-end audio quality Led Zeppelin albums here.