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.
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Young has long been an outspoken critic of what he perceives as poor quality audio. That mission led him to create the PonoPlayer, an expensive and poorly reviewed music player aimed at audiophiles, which never took off as hoped.
Before Apple Music he was critical of iTunes, which led to a spat with Steve Jobs. As revealed in the Jobs biography Becoming Steve Jobs, Young later attempted to make amends with the Apple co-founder by sending him remastered vinyl copies of all of his albums — only for Jobs to snap, “Fuck Neil Young, and fuck his records” when told about the gift.
Interestingly, while Young’s music vanished from most streaming services, it remained on TIDAL, which offers high-quality audio to subscribers.
Via: Spin
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
5 responses to “Neil Young returns to Apple Music”
Whores can’t live without attention.
1 year have passed since I decided to leave my office job and that decision changed everything for me… I started doing a job from home, for a company I found over internet, few hours a day, and I earn much more than i did on my previous work… Last paycheck i got was for 9k… Amazing thing about this job is that i have more free time for my kids… KORTA.NU/MDe
If Neil thought that streaming music in this millennium is bad quality … guess he never listened to his works on an AM radio in the last century … selective memory rarely stands the test of time.
Back on Rdio you say…
I imagine one glance at his latest royalty statement made him reconsider. Not that he’s short of a few bob. Surely it’s up to the listener to decide what ‘level of quality” (whatever that means) you listen to his music at. Even the most expensive audio equipment won’t improve his voice or songwriting IMO.