Rock legend Neil Young has disclosed that he was working on a project with Steve Jobs which would have pushed the envelope on digital music quality.
A report in
Rolling Stones documents Young's frustrations with the quality of music being sold in stores online. "When I started making records, we had a hundred percent of the sound," said Young. "And then you listen to it as an MP3 at the same volume - people leave the room. It hurts..".
Emphasizing the fact he has no "back in our times" hangover, Young said it wasn't about analog or vinyl versus digital, but more about how the various mediums were being used. "It's not that digital is bad or inferior, it's that the way it's being used isn't doing justice to the art," Young, was quoted as saying at
D: Dive Into Media conference. "The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. ... The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn't have to make that choice."
Neil Young explained that he had discussed this problem with Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs, who apparently understood, if not shared, his concerns. Young told Rolling Stones that he and Steve Jobs had discussed the possibility of developing an iPod like device that could store roughly 30 studio-quality albums, "We were working on it".
"Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you've got to believe that if he'd lived long enough, he would have done what I'm trying to do."
Not one to sit by the sides and complain, Young is working on a high-quality audio alternative to present-day audio formats like MP3. This came to light when Young and his team filed trademarks for possible names for the file format. Ivanhoe, 21st Century Record Player, Earth Storage, Storage Shed, Thanks for Listening and SQS (Studio Quality Sound) are the names being considered.