2012 key people neil young founder ; john hamm ceo products ponoplayer audio player ponomusic store website http www.ponomusic.com ponomusic is a company founded by neil young which sells an audio player the ponoplayer and high quality recordings through the ponomusic store . 1 the name derives from pono pronounced pono a hawaiian word for righteousness . 2 contents 1 history 2 products 3 see also 4 notes 5 external links history edit ponomusic was founded in 2012 by neil young along with silicon valley entrepreneur john hamm as the company s ceo . 3 pono reportedly has backing from major record labels warner sony and universal and has signed a full agreement with warner . 4 5 the company launched a successful kickstarter campaign on march 12 2014 that surpassed its target in one day . 6 ponomusic raised 6.2 million by the end of the campaign . 7 in august 2014 ponomusic turned to crowdfunder to raise more equity . 8 they closed with a total financing of 4 million . while many more international investors were interested they had to be turned away due to regulatory restrictions . 9 a year later variety reported that ponomusic struggled with funding issues which slowed down the company expansion . 10 prior to june 2015 young had sought financial backing from donald trump . 11 products edit ponomusic s products are based on the flac audio format which the company is rebranding as pono audio format . the player device called ponoplayer was initially priced at 399 and came with a maximum of 128 gb of memory 64 gb built in plus 64 gb on microsd card . they started taking preorders on march 11 2014 via kickstarter . the press release notes that the ponoplayer developed in collaboration with ayre acoustics can store 100 to 500 high resolution digital music albums . 12 ponomusic is the device s accompanying desktop based media management system which allows customers to download and sync music to player . they ll reportedly offer high resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels . 12 see also edit comparison of online music stores online music store portable media player consumer electronics notes edit sxsw 2014 neil young plugs pono his new music store and player . mercurynews.com . 2014 03 11 . retrieved 2014 03 12 . neil young shows off his studio quality pono music player . geek.com . 2012 09 28 . retrieved 2012 10 05 . the company . ponomusic.com . retrieved 2014 03 12 . poltrack adam 3 october 2012 . neil young and pono pushing new top quality digital music . home theater . digital trends . retrieved 18 october 2012 . coplan chris 28 september 2012 . neil young expands pono digital music service . consequence of sound . retrieved 18 october 2012 . pono music where your soul rediscovers music . kickstarter.com . 2014 03 12 . retrieved 2014 03 12 . taylor colleen . what s next for ponomusic the startup that took kickstarter by storm and raised 6.2 m . techcrunch . retrieved 28 april 2014 . entis laura . you can invest in neil young s company ponomusic for as little as 5 000 . entrepreneur . retrieved 18 december 2014 . barnett chance . 10 top equity crowdfunding campaigns from 2014 . forbes . retrieved 18 december 2014 . roettgers janko . neil young s pono struggles with funding searches for new ceo . retrieved 8 february 2016 . donald trump blasts neil young s hypocrisy over use of song . the guardian . retrieved 8 february 2016 . a b minsker evan . neil young launching ponomusic via kickstarter . pitchfork . retrieved 9 march 2014 . external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title ponomusic & oldid 737201299 categories companies based in seattledigital audiojukebox style media playersmobile device management softwareonline music stores navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 1 september 2016 at 09 20 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view