by Alexandra Pollard | Photos by WENN
Neil Young says Steve Jobs never intended MP3s to last
The singer recently launched his Pono player
Neil Young has claimed that MP3 players were never intended by Steve Jobs as a long term solution to digital music, insisting that the quality is wholly unacceptable.
The audiophile rock legand recently released his line of high-quality audio players Pono, which was funded through a $6 million Kickstarter, and have gone on sale recently for $399.
Speaking to Vulture, Young said that MP3 players "were pioneering devices and they were great. It’s fantastic what Apple’s been able to accomplish. However, it was not envisioned by Steve Jobs that the MP3 was going to be a standard for music. And I don’t think it is a standard for music. I think it’s the low bar for music."
Young also described playing 'Heart Of Gold' to his daughter through the Pono: "Halfway through the song she’s turned it off and she looked at me and said, 'Why have I never heard this?' And she wasn’t talking about the song. She was talking about the sound because we played the same song on both systems. And I said, 'Well, honey, it’s just never been available. What you get is pretty dummied down compared to what we make.'"