Neil Young readies Pono music service for expansion Part 2

I guess I was questioning whether it will be a huge success as well, when I wrote the following: "If he is an expert on sound, sound quality, and delivering "never raw" albums to the masses, then this might be a huge success."

I love Neil and he is one of my favorite artists.

But I'm actually not so sure that he is an expert on sound. I'm not so sure he cares as much about sound quality as he does about "raw unadulterated authenticity". And I do believe he has delivered many raw albums to the masses rather than having delivered "never raw" albums.

Some of his albums are gritty in their sound quality. Wide Open in the presentation of the sound and left that way intentionally. Sometimes at the expense of being clear and refined.

This is not a criticism, it's just what you get as part of the Neil Young package.

Some of his recordings are more refined and full of clarity than others.

Trans was a clear sounding album of his.

But I can think of many that were not.

Again, there are so many of Neil's albums that I love and treasure.

I do believe he cares about analog. About real sounding recordings.

I just never associated his music with being clear and pristine.

But raw and authentic?

Yes.

If the point of his product is not clarity but rather the sound colors that analog provides, and if he is successful in this so that the instruments sound "more real" and the colors are more vibrant, than this would be a success.

But actually, I never knew he cared that much about "sound colors".

We'll see.

 

The more competition, the better, as far as I'm concerned. From the Pono page:

The record companies set their own digital music prices, label by label. High-resolution digital albums at PonoMusic.com are expected to cost between $14.99 -$24.99, and there may be exceptions.

Do any of the other HiRez sites have $14.99 downloads (not counting sales)? I'm hoping that the $17.98 "lower-limit tendency" goes away, because of competition.

 

HDTracks has $13 16/44.1k downloads, I believe. So Pono's $14.99 might be 16/44.1k or 24/44.1k.

When I looked at their Kickstarter page and the demo PonoMusic page, $17.98 seems to be a normal price showing up. I'm guessing 24/96 will be $17.98, just like HDTracks. The problem here is that, even with competition, if the labels themselves are setting the prices then there's really very little leeway being allowed.

 

The CD sounds better to me. The DVD-Audio sounds too compressed.

 

The 5.1 version of the DVD-Audio is sublime to my ears. Never listened to the 2 channel DVD-Audio version, and don't imagine I ever will - as where I don't have a surround set up I can only listen to CDs.

 

Again, is it a fact that labels get more revenue per song depending on whether it's lossy or lossless? I don't think it's true.

 

Labels get whatever they can negotiate with the distributor. I would expect they negotiate more revenue for higher resolution knowing that the sale price will be more.

 

Perhaps, but that isn't confirmed anywhere is it? And I'm sure if that was the case the difference in price per song or album wouldn't be as extreme as what retailers like HDTracks charge.

 

I would think it's the other way around. The label owns the "goods" and the distributor wants it (and really cannot exist without it). I really don't see an HD Tracks (or similar) having any ability to set the tone at a board meeting.

More like Universal Music saying "Here's your cut after we take ours - are you in favor of that or not? If not - I am sure we can find another "distributor" to move some downloads for us".

VP

 

I'm not in any way suggesting that the disributor has the upper hand in these negotiations.

 

It's not set by a government mechanism like songwriting royalties on audio-only releases are, so it is governed by the terms of the negotiated license agreement.
The pricing differences have to do with what the labels feel they can get for their albums/artists, what price point the two parties feel will optimize profitability, and how many other players are bidding for such rights.

 

Understood. The way you phrased "whatever they can get" made it sound a little like the distributor was able to make policy

VP

 

Thanks for correcting my typo in the quote

 

I had no idea, I thought it would have been the 2008 or 2001 master. Bad is the 2001 SE though.

 

I think they get a fixed percentage based on retail price. If the download is $9.95, and they get 80%, then they get about $8; if the download is $17.95, then they'd get about $14 and change. The problem I see is that the artist might not get any more, which is what happened with cassettes, 8-tracks, and LPs back in the day. And when CDs doubled the album list price in 1984, artists' royalties did not double.

 

If the HDTracks download's sampling rate is a multiple of 44.1 kHz and there's been a SACD release, it's almost certainly taken from the DSD files. Digital conversions of DSD will never be a multiple of 48 kHz.

 

I think we need part 3 of this thread to investigate exactly how many bits are needed to be sitting next to Neil in the recording studio.