Neil Young Wants To Take You For A Ride in His Car

In Hawaiian, the word “Pono” means “righteous, the one, the whole.” It’s also the name of Neil Young’s new music player that has quite a few people talking. While the merits of the player, which has a hefty price tag of $399, are clearly up for debate, what is not is the effectiveness of the communication campaign surrounding the launch of Young’s pet project. As founder and chairman of PonoMusic, Young has been very busy. In addition to the Kickstarter launch video, Young has been promoting Pono on The Colbert Report, David Letterman, Howard Stern and more. He’s been interviewed by Forbes and Esquire magazines. He’s taken the stage to talk at SXSW and tech conferences. And he’s been inviting people to sit in his car to have a listen at places like the Bonaroo Music Festival in Tennessee.

The Pono first came to my attention through a video clip my husband Marty shared with me of Young on the The Colbert Report. My husband is a music lover in the same way I am a lover of words: a combination of nerdy technical interest and giddy emotional response. So I get why he would be so excited about this new player that emulates the analog listening experience, but why should I, a “normal” music lover care about audio resolution and the “width of the stereo field”? Well, I didn’t, until I saw the video that went on to raise over $6 million through Pono’s Kickstarter campaign.

By the end of the eleven-minute video, I was ready to spend my own $399 not only to embrace stereo width but also to advocate its value to anyone who will listen. How did this happen? Because the video brought me into the inner circle of musicians in a way I had never expected nor imagined. I learned that due to file compression (and a bunch of other technical stuff) what I hear on my iPod or even on my CD player is nothing like what the artist intended for me to hear when the song was recorded. I learned that this is a travesty and musicians don’t like it. That they really, really care about what they create in the studio and are frustrated that, despite all our advances in technology, modern-day audio recording actually diminishes the listening experience rather than enhances it. I learned that artists like Beck, Dave Matthews, Nora Jones, Elvis Costello, Eddie Vedder and all of the Mumford sons are super excited about Neil Young’s solution to this problem, a problem I did not know existed mere weeks ago. This communication strategy not only educates the recipient, it also inspires action on the part of a consumer who cares about music on any level. To not care now seems ignorant and disrespectful to the artistic process.

Several artists were invited to sit inside Young’s 1970s Cadillac Eldorado to experience first-hand the Pono in action. While the viewer cannot hear the music booming inside the car with the windows rolled up, what we do see are the artists’ reactions to the Pono experience. We see Mr. Vedder exit the car with a wide smile saying “Yeah, well, I’ve got my drug of choice and it’s now potent again.” Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons says “Just sat in the future, for 2 minutes, at Bonaroo. It’s pretty wild.” His incredulity is palpable.

What this campaign approach has done is plant the seeds for a new music-listening culture, one that authentically connects music lovers with artists by placing us on the same level of higher expectations and shared experiences. By showing how the artists feel about their craft and what this product can do both for their art and our consumption of it, the distance between us has shrunk dramatically.

The candid nature of the content is augmented by Young’s invitational approach to us, the consumer, and it feels genuine. He states that Pono is “an artist-driven movement” that simply wants us to be able to hear music they way the artists intend, in other words, to enjoy a genuine experience. As he drives off in his caddie, Young explains “We wanted you to be part of this and to help us to launch this music system into the world. It’s a music ecosystem. And we think as music lovers, having you along with us from the beginning…will be a cool thing for you to be part of and for us to be part of with you.” Righteous, indeed.

References:

Hoskinson, J. (Director). (2014). October 14, 2014 – Neil Young [television series
episode]. In S. Colbert, T. Purcell, and J. Stewart (Executive Producers), Colbert Report. New York, NY: Comedy Central.

PonoMusic Team. (2014, April 7). Pono Music Where Your Soul Rediscovers Music. [Kickstarter video]. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/90088183

RealHomeRecording. (2014, May 15). Raining on Neil Young’s Pono Parade. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/NZGM55ZqZeM