{"id":226,"date":"2025-07-16T07:21:31","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T07:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/226\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T07:21:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T07:21:31","slug":"neil-youngs-ipod-killer-99-invisible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/226\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Young\u2019s iPod Killer – 99% Invisible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Young is one of the most decorated and popular musicians of the 20th century. But he\u2019s much more than a legend of classic rock. In fact, he\u2019s taken some pretty big swings throughout his storied career. He\u2019s filled an entire California ranch house with model trains.<\/a> He\u2019s made an experimental electronic music album<\/a> that baffled his fans. He even directed a baffling sci-fi film starring the band Devo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But perhaps his most radical experiment was his attempt to build a music player that would rival the iPod. Young\u2019s device, called Pono after the Hawaiian word for \u201crighteous\u201d, rolled out in 2015. It took the form of a yellow equilateral triangle, and was marketed as a way to listen to higher quality audio files, and experience a richer sound quality than what was available from tech giants like Apple.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Young recruited celebrity pals like Tom Petty and Elton John to hype up his new music player, and promised that listeners would fall in love with higher resolution audio. But ultimately, it never found an audience. Critics were very mixed on the Pono, with some arguing the listening experience was no better than the cheaper audio players already on the market.<\/p>\n

After a few short years, Young stopped producing Ponos, and the curio was largely forgotten, or remembered only as a punchline. But for the device\u2019s tenth anniversary, writer Nate Rogers has made a reappraisal, provocatively titled \u201cWhat if we were Wrong About Pono?\u201d<\/a> In it, he argues Neil Young and his cohorts were ahead of their time, and that the yellow triangular bauble looks a whole lot better after a decade of devaluing music and the people who make it. Perhaps the Pono is a noble project, one we just weren\u2019t ready for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neil Young is one of the most decorated and popular musicians of the 20th century. But he\u2019s much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}