"Regarding the Pono, there is a lot of controversy around it. The biggest I guess is when Young comes out and says he is doing it to keep the musical experience pure, but when asked what his profit share was the press conference was quickly aborted (he is getting 30%)"
Where's that information coming from? Both claims.
It's obvious what you're trying to say there: Young has a heavy financial interest in the project but is too shifty to let people know about that and would sabotage a press conference (presumably arranged by him) to avoid uncomfortable questions from discerning cats like you and me. What a hypocrite, man.
Is that really how it went down? I'm prejudiced toward thinking this is tedious, somewhat exaggerated gossip.
On the wider topic, his contribution to getting people to try out different ways of listening to their music instead of sticking with good old CD and mp3 is hard to deny. Not many people take issue with the work he's done on his own back catalogue, there's general agreement that it comes out sounding pretty damn good, but without over-restoration.
I'd like to see the Pono contribute something positive to the music scene, and the way people listen, but I have doubts about whether there is really much of a market for it - ultimately, it's probably going to look like just another music player (but with an awkward shape and none of the cachet of an iPod) coupled with a download service. We'll have to see.
My hopes are that it can survive alongside what's already out there: too many people see everything as either/or: 16/44 is good enough for the human ear, so no need for 24/192; iPod/iPhone + iTunes is all you need for your music; why buy whole albums when you can buy just buy individual tracks at 0.99, etc. Those are the people who think a project like the Pono can't survive and shouldn't survive. I prefer to think that while iTunes and Apple do indeed have a stranglehold on music, there is plenty else going on out there, some people are really into exploring higher quality options and hooking up good DACs and systems to their PC, others want a completely separate audio system, still others want nothing to do with digital at all. In a way, there's never been a more interesting time to be into music, you can really settle for whichever options you want, and if it's vinyl only, so be it. In that sense, the Pono could occupy a healthy little niche. I don't imagine it's going to be a runaway success, but a modest success? I'd settle for that.
The digital market of today has made things a lot more fragmented than it was in the 1980s when it really was just vinyl/CD/cassette, but the fragmentation isn't necessarily a bad thing.
