http://www.spin.com/#articles/neil-young-pono-music-service-sxsw/

by Garrett Kamps

March 12 2014, 8:04 AM ET
When Neil Young tells you that there's something out of whack with the way you're listening to music, then you can't help but listen, which is what those of us who had assembled in the main hall of the Austin Convention Center were doing on Tuesday afternoon as the legendary rocker paced the stage, eerily resembling Steve Jobs during one of the Apple guru's famed keynotes.

"There was really something wrong," Young said, recounting the period in the '80s when the industry crossed over from analog to digital. "And it was that we were selling shit. And people were still buying it because they liked music – but they were buying wallpaper, they were buying background sounds, they were buying Xeroxes of the Mona Lisa."

Therein lies the sales pitch for Young's new music service, Pono: For years now, thanks to the advent first of digital recording, then MP3s, then — heaven forbid — streaming, we music fans have been missing out on 95 percent of the information contained in an analog recording. Choosing the convenience of digital over the quality of analog, consumers have been systematically and, to hear Neil tell it, somewhat conspiratorially denied access to the soul of music. Not only has this destroyed the experience of listening to music, it's wrought havoc on the entire industry.

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