When we last visited the Pono Music, on the first day of its crowdfunding campaign, it had exceeded the goal within hours, quickly raising over a million dollars. We were impressed, but pessimistic about the business prospects in the niche category of high-end audio in a convenience-oriented mobile world. Today, we are more impressed than ever by the Kickstarter success, but remain convinced that the product will exist in a limited niche.
The marketing effort is outstanding, assisted by Neil Young’s rolodex of musicians willing to listen and evangelize the experience in a persuasive promotional video. but it’s one thing for musicians to be ecstatic over hi-fi reproduction of their studio work, and another to ask consumers to re-purchase their music, buy and carry another mobile device, forego the music-service cloud for local storage, and siphon the whole thing through sound components that might not take advantage of high-resolution files.
Pessimism aside, Pono Music appears to be a well thought-out high-end ecosystem for audio connoisseurs, and a beautiful product.