Old rockers never go away quietly. Neil Young applied for six trademarks in USA: Ivanhoe, 21st Century Record Player, Earth Storage, Storage Shed, Thanks for Listening and SQS (Studio Quality Sound).
The filing came with a description of the trademarks: "Online and retail store services featuring music and artistic performances; high resolution music downloadable from the internet; high resolutions discs featuring music and video; audio and video recording storage and playback."
Neil Young wants a hi-res alternative to MP3 music.
You see, Neil Young hates compressed song files available at MP3 stores like iTunes and Amazon. According to Young, a typical download contains only 5% of the data that an original analog recording master offers, and the average studio-quality audio file requires roughly 30 minutes to download because of its uncompressed size.
A press release last year alerted us to how this Canadian singer-songwriter really feels, "Young is also personally spearheading the development of Pono, a revolutionary new audio music system presenting the highest digital resolution possible, the studio quality sound that artists and producers heard when they created their original recordings."
Last year Young also publicly proposed that "some rich guy" should create "a modern-day iPod for the 21st Century" featuring studio-quality resolution. "When I started making records, we had a 100% of the sound," says Young. "And then you listen to it as an MP3 at the same volume – people leave the room. It hurts...It's not that digital is bad or inferior. It's that the way it's being used is not sufficient to transfer the depth of the art."
So Neil Young is searching for a better sound. That man has a Heart of Gold, but he’s getting old…
Read Rolling Stone (Yes, you finally get to read Rolling Stone and call it “business reading…")
