PonoMusic
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
PonoMusic was founded in 2012 by musician Neil Young with Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Hamm as CEO. It built the PonoPlayer - a portable device for high-resolution 24-bit/192kHz audio - and a download store for lossless FLAC music from major and independent labels. The company raised development money through a Kickstarter campaign, shipped to backers starting October 2014 and to the public in early 2015.
02 / PonoMusic FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Pono arrived just as consumers were moving to streaming, and Young himself blamed record labels for the failure: they insisted on charging two to three times more for high-resolution files than for MP3s, which buyers refused to pay. The download store's operator was then bought by Apple and shut down, and building a replacement storefront proved too costly, so the project was discontinued in 2017.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Neil Young founded PonoMusic with John Hamm as CEO to sell studio-quality digital music; Warner, Sony and Universal backed the project.
- Kickstarter and launch
PonoMusic raised $6.2 million through Kickstarter and began production and shipments of the PonoPlayer to backers in October 2014.
- Public sales
Shipments to the general public began in the first quarter of 2015 alongside the download store.
- Store goes dark
The download storefront went into 'under construction' mode in July 2016 and never returned.
- Discontinued
Pono was officially discontinued in April 2017; later relaunch plans were abandoned.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.