Posts Tagged ‘Ponomusic’

How superfans drive the entertainment business

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, via Pono Music

This is hardcore, says Slate .

Superfans are driving the entertainment business. Neil Young’s Pono digital musical player has raised more than $4 million from fans on Kickstarter. Yikes.

The lead in the article talks about Neil but the rest is a tale of how things fans are driving the things they love through these sorts of campaigns.

It’s been a big month for small projects on Kickstarter, writes Slate author Jon Nathanson. First a consortium of musicians and industry veterans, fronted by Neil Young, used the site to launch Pono, a digital music player and download service. Young and his partners set a fundraising goal of $800,000, to be reached within 35 days.

Instead, they met that goal in under a day, then broke $2.5 million in their first 60 hours. At the time of this writing, Pono has exceeded $4 million in pledges. (The campaign will run through April 15; Pono is scheduled to launch in October.)

A few days later, Warner Bros. released a Veronica Mars movie in theaters and online. The film grossed $2 million at only 291 theaters worldwide, with a healthy $6,945 per-screen average. The movie owed its existence to Kickstarter—Rob Thomas, creator of the original TV series, raised $5.7 million on Kickstarter last year to fund production of the feature.

überfans.

Nathanson writes: “But crowdfunding isn’t catering to the mainstream crowd. When 3 million of us pledged $480 million to Kickstarter projects in 2013, we didn’t establish any new industries or shake up any old ones. Instead, we identified ourselves as the early adopters: the hardcores, the überfans. We’re the kind of people who, in absence of Kickstarter, would have bought the special edition of a Veronica Mars DVD or paid extra for better seats at a Neil Young concert. We’re the kind of people who download all the value-added content in our favorite video games. When something’s labeled “collectible,” we’re the ones collecting it.”

Read more at: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bet/2014/03/kickstarter_neil_young_veronica_mars_how_hard_core_fans_drive_the_entertainment.html

Tags: Kickstarter, pono, Ponomusic
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A message from Neil Young

Thanks everyone for all of your support. It has been and continues to be gratifying to me to see how many of you are supporting Pono and our revolution in the way people can listen. Now we will have a choice that is as convenient as it is great sounding. We are celebrating our Freedom of Choice. I especially want to thank Elliot Roberts for his tireless efforts to bring you the great signature artists we are offering with their special limited edition players. More signature artists seem to sign up every day! These artists love you to actually hear their creations exactly the way they were made. They, like myself, have been waiting a long time for Pono. My talent at signing posters is getting a great workout. I’m happy to report that most of my signatures are legible. Ha Ha. I don’t think there will be any more posters offered though! I just wanted to say thanks on behalf of everyone involved in PonoMusic. We could not have done this without you. Neil Young

Tags: Elliot Roberts, pono, Ponomusic
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Beam me up! Young writing sci-fi?

“Sometimes what I love is not what other people love, but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I’m still here.” ~N.Y.

In an interview with Spin Neil Young says he is penning a Sci-fi story.

After listening to Neil’s keynote address at SXSW on March 11, 2014, SPIN sat down with Young in a suite at an out-of-the-way hotel in Austin to talk music, sound, saturation, retro-tech, new albums, and writing.

And then I’m writing another book right now, which is a science fiction book. I’m well into it, maybe 100 pages.

When do you like to write? I write on airplanes and in hotels. It keeps me off the street.

What’s the science-fiction book about?

Hmmm.

Do we have to wait? It’s great. I think it’s better to wait. It’s crazy to talk about. Too fucking weird. But it’s great, I love it. I love writing sci-fi. I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

Wow!

Read the entire interview at: http://www.spin.com/#articles/neil-young-pono-music-new-album-a-letter-home-sxsw-2014-interview/

Shar out!

Tags: A Letter Home, Jack White, pono, Ponomusic, retro-tech, South by Southwest Festival, Spin, SWSW
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How Neil Young raised $2 million in two days

Pono Team

As of Today Neil Young has been pledged almost $3 million for Pono! (with 8,980 backers!)

Forbes talks to Neil Young about he raised $2 million in two days on Kickstarter for his Pono project.

The Pono players will cost $399 and a projected $15-$25 per album price tag when the entire system goes live in October.

Staff writer Zack O’Malley Greenburg writes  about the fact that, “at this very moment, he’s raising money for Pono–his long-awaited music player and service for high-quality audio files–at a rate of about $700 per minute via Kickstarter. Along with previous support from some outside investors, that will be more than enough to bring Pono to market this fall.”

“Thank goodness that we have the investors that we have, because we were able to get as far as we could” before launching the Kickstarter campaign, says Young. “Far enough to be able to show the product. … But we couldn’t get [corporate] investors to get interested in saving an art form.”

For Young, though, Pono is about much more than a Kickstarter campaign. He wants to create an entire iTunes-like ecosystem for high-quality digital files, complete with an answer to the iPod (the PonoPlayer) and the iTunes Store (the PonoMusic.com Store).

Pono’s business model is similar, too: revenues will be divided in a manner similar to the 70/30 split between content creators and Apple. Says Pono chief executive John Hamm: ”That’s the same deal we have. That’s the same deal everyone has.”

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/13/how-neil-youngs-pono-music-raised-2-million-in-two-days/

Tags: Forbes, Kickstarter, pono, Ponomusic
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Neil interview at SXSW

Hear Neil Young explains his Pono Music Player at SXSW on National Public Radio’s “All Songs Considered.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/03/12/289435279/hear-neil-young-explain-his-pono-music-player-at-sxsw

Neil Young wants to start a revolution against the MP3, against the CD, poorly made vinyl and poor audio quality in general. He wants people to hear the music the way it was made, writes NPR’s Bob Boilen.

“I’m a fan of listening loud. I love to listen loud. That’s what it’s all about, really, for me. I love to hear rock and roll really loud, and I love to hear even acoustic music really loud. Loud for whatever it is it’s being played on. I like to take whatever it is to the limit, and then listen to it right there.

“When I started doing that with these machines, it started to hurt, and I couldn’t do it for very long, so the part of the record-making experience that I used to enjoy became painful. That was a sign to me that something was wrong. I complained a little, and I might have bitched and moaned a little about that too. Then time went by, and I got some better machines, but they weren’t really that much better — it didn’t change it.

“But I noticed when I listened to CDs in my car, the same thing happened — it hurt my ears a little bit. And then the MP3 came along, and that’s when the recording industry really went into duress.”

Read more of Neil’s speech at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/03/12/289435279/hear-neil-young-explain-his-pono-music-player-at-sxsw

Tags: NPR, pono, Ponomusic, SXSW
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