Neil Young

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on Neil Young:

Apple Music taunts Spotify with massive Neil Young promotion

By

Apple Music backs Neil Young
Apple Music is "the home of Neil Young."
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

Apple Music has launched a huge Neil Young promotion just days after Spotify began pulling all of the singer’s content from its platform.

Listeners will today find a “We Love Neil” section under the “Browse” tab that features albums, interviews, and playlists. Cupertino has also send out tweets and push notifications that call Apple Music “The home of Neil Young.”

Neil Young slams MacBook Pro’s ‘Fisher-Price’ audio quality

By

MacBook-Pro-music
It's just "garbage."
Photo: Marc-Olivier Paquin/Unsplash

Neil Young believes there’s a big problem with making music on a MacBook Pro. In a recent interview, the acclaimed singer-songwriter slammed the “Fisher-Price” audio quality you get with Apple’s newest notebooks.

Young also revealed that Steve Jobs knew about his concerns, but felt that MacBook audio was good enough for consumers.

A brand-new Tetris game is already out on iOS

By

Tetris-iOS
That didn't take long.
Photo: The Tetris Company

A brand-new Tetris game today landed on iOS — just a day after EA confirmed it is retiring its own lineup of Tetris titles.

The game promises to deliver the traditional Tetris gameplay experience millions of fans around the world already know and love. But this is not the Tetris Royale title that was announced last year.

Neil Young rips Apple Music over streaming audio quality

By

Neil Young takes Apple Music to task for
Neil Young takes Apple Music to task for "low quality" audio tracks.
Photo: Takahiro Kyono/Flickr CC

Canadian rocker Neil Young, an outspoken promoter of high-definition audio, calls out Apple in his latest diatribe about declining standards in the streaming music biz.

While ripping Apple Music for distributing what he calls “low-quality audio,” he throws down the gauntlet and challenges Apple to make music great again.

Neil Young returns to Apple Music

By

Neil Young hates your silly music stream services
Neil Young previously swore off Apple Music for quality issues.
Photo: Kris Krüg/Flickr

Well that didn’t last long! Having previously taken almost all of his music off streaming services due to their alleged poor sound quality, Neil Young is back on Apple Music, Spotify and Rdio — as well as new music service Amazon Music Unlimited.

The creator of the high-fidelity PonoPlayer, Young last year published a missive in which he said that he didn’t want his music to be “devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution.”

Somewhere along the way, though, it seems his stance his changed.

Neil Young admits his iPod competitor is having a hard time

By

Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Photo: Pono

After years spent whining about how the iPod was killing the music industry, rock legend Neil Young pulled his albums from Apple Music and launched his own iPod killer, the Pono Player. It was a weird pyramid shaped device that specialized in high-resolution audio, sold through its own music store, which Ars Technica memorably declared a tall, refreshing drink of snake water.

Anyone surprised to hear, then, that even as iPod sales die, Young’s Pono Player is having trouble keeping pace with it?

Neil Young pulls his albums from Apple Music ’cause they sound soooo bad

By

Neil Young hates your silly music stream services
Neil Young hates your silly music streaming services
Photo: Kris Krüg/Flickr

Canadian singer-songwriter and musician turned high-fidelity music spokesman, Neil Young, announced that he’s fed up with music streaming service. Sure, there’s a lot less money in streaming than selling albums, but Young revealed to fans that he’s pulling his albums from Apple Music and other services today because the music just sounds too horrible for him to tolerate.

The Pono Player creator told fans this morning that the sound quality was dramatically reduced by ‘bad deals’ made without his consent so he has no choice but to pull his entire catalog from Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal so that you, the fan, aren’t harmed by hearing his music in the worst quality in the history of broadcasting — which is probably the way you’ve been listening to his music the past five years.

Here is Young’s full explanation:

Neil Young’s pricey PonoPlayer no better than iPhone for music

By

Neil Young's PonoPlayer digital music player is getting ripped by critics who say it sounds no better than an iPhone. Photo: PonoMusic
Neil Young's PonoPlayer digital music player is getting ripped by critics who say it sounds no better than an iPhone. Photo: PonoMusic

Eccentric rocker Neil Young has never been swayed by the critics. He has always made the music he wanted.

But he may not be able to be so carefree, as some critics eviscerate his latest musical endeavor – a pricey, Kickstarter-funded digital music player aimed at rescuing music from the MP3 format.

The PonoPlayer, resembling a Toblerone bar in shape and color, was supposed to revolutionize the digital listening experience and with a $400 price tag, not to mention a $6.2 million Kickstarter campaign, expectations were high. Users can download music from the Pono site and listen to high-quality files that restore the quality historically compressed out of digital music.

Turns out, it sounds no better than music on an iPhone, according to several critics who have put the PonoPlayer through its paces.

Neil Young’s iPod-Killer Has Already Made $2.5 Million On Kickstarter

By

pono

 

In a plot ripped straight from 2005, Neil Young announced this week that he’s taking on the iPod with his new high-def audio music player, the Pono.

We had a good laugh talking about the Pono on this week’s CultCast, but after checking the Kickstarter page this morning it might be Neil who gets the last laugh as his project has already earned more than $2.5 million in pledges.

Neil Young Hopes His iPod Rival Will Rock The Free World

By

Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Neil Young's high-res audio player is having a touch time taking off.
Photo: Pono

Keeping with the times, musician Neil Young is set to launch a storming attack on Apple’s iPhone iPad iWatch iPod with his forthcoming PonoPlayer.

Young is set to exhibit the PonoPlayer, alongside a music download store called PonoMusic, at this year’s SXSW.

Apple Accepting High-Resolution Music for iTunes, Says Sound Engineer [Report]

By

Tube Amp

Today, there’s word that Apple is now accepting high-resolution music files for iTunes, perhaps in advance of selling music in such a format. Apple is asking sound engineers for 96 kHz, 24-bit WAV files, possibly to process it’s own “mastered for iTunes” versions, but also to perhaps start selling music in “better than CD quality” resolution and format.