Neil Young's HD Music Battle

At the recommendation of a friend, I recently started reading ‘Waging Heavy Peace’. It’s the autobiography of the Canadian artist Neil Young (you might have heard of him, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young …. ’Harvest Moon’ … 'Heart Of Gold'.... ’Rocking In The Free World’ anyone???)

I’m not very far into it at all, but one thing that was obviously featuring very heavily in his life at the time of writing (circa 2011), other than classic cars, alternative power sources and train sets was a project he was developing called ‘Pure Tone’.

What's the problem?

His argument was, (and still is) that modern music formats compress or simplify the audio upon which they are based. We’ve all heard the argument many record collectors have about vinyl being a better listening experience, fuller, warmer, more engaging. It’s essentially because digital sources remove a lot of what some might consider extraneous audio information. It’s part of what allows compact discs to be compact, or streaming services like Spotify to beam music to your phone or Alexa without interruption. Basically audio quality is sacrificed in the name of convenience and portability.

Neil Young isn’t against digital music per se. If you’re happy with what you’re listening to, that’s great, his argument is that if you want as close an experience as you can to be at a live performance or in the studio with the actual band, vinyl is your only option. 

I too am a slave to portability, and owning very little vinyl except by inheritance or accident, was pretty much unaware of the audible differences until I inadvertently bought an anniversary box set of ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ by Wilco on vinyl from ebay last Christmas. I know the songs on that record really well, and the improvement, or in effect ‘extra’ I could hear from the vinyl was quite surprising.

The solution...

Young however began to develop the portable alternative to vinyl. He called it ‘Pure Tone’ initially - consider it a dedicated ipod type device with a much higher quality storage and sampling rate. At the stage I’m at in the book, Young is on the verge of wrangling a deal with Warner Brothers, he has a kickstarter campaign running, significant backing from influential people in Silicon Valley and is about to appoint a CEO.

I’m going to share with you an interview video Young undertook with Forbes magazine at the time, which I think will help clarify what I’ve just said and possibly fill in some of the blanks.

Sounds great eh? Literally. As you might have guessed then, the immediate question that sprang to my mind as I began to read the book is, ‘what happened’? Did a revolution in music listening happen and I missed it? 

Well, no, because as is with many things in the world of big business, ideas that challenge the status quo, or the increasing grip of companies like Spotify are swiftly battered down. Control of the music industry has been systematically wrenched away from artists in favour of big business, and such the music itself has been devalued. With the increasing use of AI in music production and even creation, there may come a time where artists aren’t actually required at all. With the larger streaming companies paying somewhere in the region of $0.004 per play, there’s certainly not much direct financial incentive for artists to play ball.

‘Pure Tone’ finally saw the light of day as ‘Pono’, which in turn kind of evolved into a system called ‘XStream’ which passed away in 2016. ‘Pure Tone’ style downloads to play on your $400 ‘Pono Player’ cost in excess of three times that of normal downloads, in other words, big business made the ‘Pure Tone’ concept so expensive, it couldn’t possibly compete. You might assume then that this particular dream of Neil Young has died, but actually, he might have lit a spark. 

Around the time of the demise of Pono, Beyonce, Jay-Z and several other artists launched a subscription service called ‘Tidal’ which is beginning to make inroads against the mainline streaming giants for offering higher quality and specialised content. Amazon I believe is now also offering a higher quality music service for premium subscribers.

The Neil Young Archives

Neil Young however, is continuing to be Neil Young, as perhaps only a handful of people like him can. Young’s ‘Pure Tone’ dream has ultimately manifested in ‘The Neil Young Archives’ which contain high quality recordings, of new and old material alike, demos, rarities, the whole shooting match, for just $1.99 per month. In January 2020, Rolling Stone Magazine reported that the site had approximately 25,000 subscribers, which seems pretty paltry compared to Spotify’s 615,000,000 odd users. If you unpack that though, those 25,000 fans pay $600,000 direct to Young for a premium ‘direct to artist’ experience per annum, equivalent to approximately 162,000,000 Spotify streams.

Clearly there is space in the market then for some artists to wrestle some control back from an industry which seems hell bent on starving the hand that essentially feeds it, and connect directly with their fanbase. Neil Young’s quiet success in this particular battle might have come at some cost, but it might just prove to be one of his many, many dreams that proves to be a real blueprint for the future of music.

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Thought I'd include this as it's one of our Coustics club favourites!

And this...