Pono Music announced that it will upgrade customers’ purchases to higher resolutions as they become available from labels at no charge. This new policy, dubbed the PonoPromise, is meant to avoid the cycle of re-purchasing songs as they become available on better or more convenient formats, such as from cassettes to CDs to MP3s. The company is adding a crowdsource angle to this new feature, with the option for customers to vote on albums they especially want to see with improved audio quality. Pono says it will try to leverage those artists and labels to release the hi-fi versions for their fans.
This is certainly a consumer-friendly choice for Pono to take, but for Neil Young to keep doubling down on the audio quality topic when an increasing amount of formal and informal studies show that people can’t hear the difference is a surprising one. At least you’ve got to admire his tenacity.