By BOB BUSBY
— LOS ANGELES — “Come a little bit closer, hear what I have to say.”
So sang Neil Young some 22 years ago. Now he’s out to show he was serious.
Harboring much disdain for the compressed sound from MP3 technology, yesterday Mr. Young launched a KickStarter campaign for his self ballyhooed yet to be realized high-fidelity portable music player Pono.
The KickStarter goal was to raise $800,000 in 34 days. As of this writing the first 24 hours has elapsed netting a jaw dropping $2,227,343 from just under 7,000 backers many of whom have pledged $300 which gets them the player expected to retail for $399.
However there are also a lot of pledges for $400 and there is also a sold out pledge level of $5,000 for which there’s a super-duper prize.
We’ve yet to see when or how Pono will get to market but Mr. Young is certainly off to a remarkable start.
See campaign here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music
