A few weeks ago, Neil Young appeared on Late Night with David Letterman to promote Pono. Pono is Young's project turned reality, for giving music fans and consumer better quality sound from their digital purchases. The word Pono is Hawaiian for righteous, and if it delivers the promise of studio quality sound, that's just about what it will be.
I posted in the past about lossless audio compression schemes such as FLAC, which can play back a WAV file, which is what CD files are made from, with a sound that is exactly like the original. What Young has come up with, is a player that can play back studio files recorded at an uncompressed 192kHz/24 bit resolution. He's already made a deal with Sony, Universal, and Warner to make high resolution versions of some top name artists' music available in a Pono download store. The player will also have the ability to play back any audio file format, plus it will be able to convert those files into high resolution files.
Mp3 files are considered lossy audio files, because a portion of the information in a WAV, file from which they are usually made, is removed in order to compress it so that it is faster to download or stream over the internet. Much talk has been circulated over the past several years about using lossless compression schemes such as FLAC, which is similar to a zip file, where none of the information is removed. While some e-music stores have been making downloads available in several different forms, most are still offering only Mp3's, but with a higher bitrate such as 256kbps, 320kbps or higher.
Personally, I'm in favor of better sounding downloads, and more over, I think that Young is on the right track. The question that hasn't been asked is how much will the higher resolution downloads cost. One reason that the Mp3 has stayed in such high demand is that the cost per track is usually .99 or lower if on sale. Of course, having said that, I can see how some classic tracks and albums would be viewed worthy of a higher price, as a high resolution download, no matter what the cost.
All in all, with the introduction of Pono, it would seem that the digital download business may be in for a little shake up.
