So, if you’re wondering why I haven’t posted a blog entry in a while (and lets be real, you’re not wondering that at all), there’s a perfectly reasonable excuse for this. Let me tell you a cool little story that most people haven’t heard, about a project that I’m fortunate enough to be a part of.
Many moons ago, probably well over a year now, I saw a clip of Neil Young on Letterman’s show that really made my head tilt like that of our little dog’s when you pique her interest with treats… because he was in fact piquing my interest with treats… musical treats. In this interview, Neil was showing off a prototype design of something he was referring to as Pono, which sounded remarkably inappropriate, but makes sense when you start to understand the meaning (more on that later). Neil went on to explain that he has long been reeling in the idea that the digital world has gone off and ruined music, and in a disgusting fashion.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, because it was the same thing I was thinking: ‘Crazy old man needing to waste his money on something that he’ll hope to make up for in eventual sales… taking on iTunes… pipe dream.’
Fast forward to early 2014, where I had somehow stumbled upon the information that Neil Young would be launching a crowd-funding campaign to feed his hi-resolution music-fueled passion sometime in the spring. So I went out searching for more information about this little device, and its revered musical powers, but the only thing I could find on it was negativity… and I don’t buy in to that. So I had to do something about it.
It wasn’t until the subject re-emerged as a Kickstarter fire sale that was getting attention in many media outlets. This past March, Neil came down to Texas to show off his little gadget and officially launched Pono’s campaign on the popular crowd-funding site at a big to-do at SXSW in Austin. The initial goal was to raise $800,000. Turns out, they had surpassed that mark in just one day on Kickstarter, and would eventually end the campaign with $6.25 million to make this product ‘real’. But… there were questions to be answered, and they had to be asked by somebody that wasn’t negative… So I had to do something about it.
I am no audiophile. It turns out, the audiophile community (you know, those people with thousands of dollars in expendable income that get persnickety about the most minute details in their stereo systems… many of which cost more than a Fiat 500) was REEEEALLY in tune with what was going on, and had been for quite some time. Any audiophile, along with Neil, would tell you, ‘He didn’t invent Hi-Res music, he’s just making it convenient and affordable.’ These people are bursting at the seems with knowledge, much of which I will never understand, and were ready to answer questions from any inquirer. But there had to be somebody to ask the questions, somebody that followed Pono’s business model and idea with blind positivity… So I had to do something about it.
So I did what anyone would do… I created a website. Its called PonoPeople.
I created a forum site where questions could be asked by unassuming and ignorant fanboys (like me), and subsequently answered by the wise and technical men of the HiFi realm (not me). Oh and along the way, maybe we could get to know each other? Lets see where this goes, eh mate? (I’ve found Hi-Res music to be really big in places that aren’t America, go figure).
The site wasn’t all THAT successful, really it wasn’t. But it did get the job done. It kicked into gear with the countless amounts of questions that were spawned by a comment section on Pono’s Kickstarter page, most of them surrounding technicalities with the player and platforms themselves. Relevant. At the time, prototypes at Pono were still being used, so answers were not easy to come by, simply because a final product had not been developed and they were dealing with many ‘unknowns.’
Eventually my site grew, and its reputation among Kickstarter backers was mixed. Since I didn’t have the wherewithal to answer many of the questions, I had to bring in moderators to do the heavy-lifting. Moderators that knew what they were talking about. Enter 3 guys, all from ‘across the pond’, who would unknowingly have a seat in the car next to me on a rollercoaster of a ride. All my dad’s age or older. All audiophiles. All asking questions of Pono, but answering others’ questions as well. Why not bring them into the fold, eh?
Ian is from Liverpool, knows a lot about, well… a lot. He has studied online communities since the 80s with a guy named Geoffrey Moore, whose written many books about evolving online societies and the like. I got lucky with this guy.
Eduard lives in France, by way of The Netherlands, and has had a long and successful career in software development and computer programming. He’s the bigger Neil Young fan of us all. That makes 2 lucky strikes.
Rich lives in Israel and is a guy that spent most of his time bashing Pono on Kickstarter, not because of their product, but because of their lack of communication… oh and he’s a lawyer. How in the world do you explain that? 3 guys that randomly came together to moderate a measly site that wasn’t very well thought-out to begin with. Some things just work… you can’t explain it.
At the time I’m writing this post, there are 256 registered users on my site. Its not very active anymore, especially since Pono’s campaign has ended.
So here’s the idea, now that I’ve bored you with the set-up story:
What does ‘Pono’ mean exactly? Pono is a Hawaiian word that can be translated into 83 different words in the English language, the closest term being ‘righteous.’ It also means ‘pure’, ‘virtuous’, ‘morally right’, ‘proper’, ‘hope’, and countless other words that make it the perfect moniker for what Neil Young has set out to accomplish.
Apple came along and ruined music. Not really, but kinda. MP3s made a mark on the industry in the early 21st century to make music convenient. In order to do this, music had to be compressed into small digital file sizes so you could fit 25 days worth of music on a device that you otherwise don’t listen to (I’m a guilty party as well). It’s worked, very well I might add. The problem is this, in order to compress music into MP3s, you lose a LOT of what many songs originally intended to be.
A lot of people, myself included, would say that you lose a lot of what makes up the emotional aspect of the songs. This is why vinyl has seen a dramatic comeback in recent years. Vinyl records, also known as an ‘analog format’, are cut as close as you can get (for now) to the same cloth that artists use in the studio to make music. They don’t lose NEARLY as many nuances and dynamics and crescendos that are lost with an MP3. An analog recording of a song contains FIVE TIMES the amount of musical information than an MP3 does… that’s how watered down your music has become. All of this wonderful technology that allows us to watch Big Brother in HD and read cheesy romance novels on a screen without glare in the sun… and we can’t even make music sound better? Take any industry you can think of, and technology has found a way to make its product better… except music.
Some bands even admit that they aren’t even aware of what they are doing when they go into the studio to lay down a record. Jim James, of My Morning Jacket, says quality awareness is something that isn’t a priority to a lot of today’s producers, and that they were all convinced that using the best recording equipment wouldn’t matter, if the songs were going to be on iTunes as MP3s anyway… until now.
Pono aims to bring you both convenience and quality, and at a fairly reasonable price, all things in the audiophile kingdom considered. Its a ‘music ecosystem’ as Neil says. The company is not just pushing a portable device, but a movement in artists young and old to get things back to the way they were, when vinyl was king. The player will feature a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) to allow for a dynamic that you’ve more than likely never heard before in your music. It will also feature an online music store, that will allow you to download songs in FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format, instead of those nasty MP3s. They’ve already gotten all three major labels on board, and promise to bring customers master tapes of as much material as they possibly can, which basically makes it sound like you’re sitting behind the control board in the studio.
Ok… enough about that. There’s a LOT of technical jargon that I can go into right now, but I won’t. You can do that research on your own (possibly at my website?)
So, the Kickstarter campaign is coming to a close, and suddenly Pono is recognizing my little website as something that they had never even imagined. I was just shocked that they had recognized it, but something they didn’t expect? Turns out, the activity surrounding PonoPeople and Kickstarter inspired them to bring forth a new way to combat poor music quality… COMMUNITY. Something that iTunes doesn’t even have.
In order to do so, they needed help. Enter myself and the 3 moderators. Suddenly we were exchanging frantic emails about all kinds of scenarios, trying to wrap our heads around what it was that Pono was asking us to do. Turns out, they wanted us to do a lot! Draft community guidelines, figure out what it meant to ‘be pono’ and come up with values surrounding that mentality, sign Non-Disclosure Agreements… all very much a whirlwind of emotions.
Ian was attending a Neil Young concert in Liverpool a few weeks ago, just as all of this was coming to a head. Finally, we’d get a better understanding of things. Leading up to the show, the CEO of Pono had suddenly resigned, and Neil Young had stepped in to take over the role (he was simply the ‘founder’ before then). This, of course, threw us for a loop as well, and in order to get a grip on reality, Ian reached out to the SVP of Communications for the company, who we had been in touch with before.
By the end of the show, Ian was heading backstage to meet with Neil for a 20-minute conversation, all surrounding Pono and the direction we were going (I say ‘we’ because at this point we knew that we were considered more than simply fanboys).
In this conversation with Neil, Ian laid it all out… how the 4 of us came to be, what we had in mind for the future of the company and its community, etc. In doing so, he made it a point to inform Neil that I was the one that brought us all together (not sure how much I’ve contributed since then). Neil’s reaction was simple. He had stated that he knew who I was very early on, when PonoPeople first took flight. Now THAT… is humbling. I guess you could say the 4 of us are a new form of ‘Righteous Brothers’.
Since then, I’ve picked up Neil’s auto-biography entitled ‘Waging Heavy Peace,’ and I must say… the man’s a visionary beyond anything I could’ve imagined, as if his guitar-work and songwriting abilities aren’t enough.
Soon you will see the fruits of our labor with Pono, and our fingerprints will be all over the new community site. I can’t go into much detail, but I will say that it will be something we’ve not yet seen. Imagine iTunes and Facebook being one in the same… but with better music and with a rock star at the helm.
One of these days I hope to meet Neil. It would certainly bring this journey full circle. I started a website, and found myself in a myriad of unfathomable events that I couldn’t have dreamed up if I tried. You never know what’s around the corner. Look for me at PonoMusic.com, because PonoPeople will soon be dismantled.
And one more thing, always remember to be pono. Live for the experiences in life, not the possessions.
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