Neil Young to Stop Rocking in the Streaming World
Musician Neil Young has declared that he will be removing his music from all streaming services, due to poor audio quality. In a post on Facebook, Young claimed that streaming music sounds worse than FM radio, 8-track tapes, and cassettes. “Streaming is the worst audio in history,” Young said. In 2014, Young developed a competitor to iTunes, PonoMusic, which offers high-quality audio downloads, meant to be played on the company’s Toblerone-shaped music player, which Ars Technica called, “a tall, refreshing drink of snake oil.”
Finally lost the plot. Don't think it's snake oil he's been drinking.
Unfortunately Neil Young doesn't seem to realize that anybody (like him) who has been standing in front of stacks of blaring amps for 30 or 40 years has virtually no hearing left to make any kind of subtle judgements of audio quality. It's all in his mind.
Even without this factor, normal age-related high-frequency hearing loss (called "presbycusis") unavoidably cuts the audible limit to below 8 KHz for a male in their 60's. The familiar "20Hz-20KHz" frequency range of human hearing is true only for 10-year-olds who aren't rock musicians.