Neil Young To Take On iTunes With Pono

Neil Young has announced that he is planning to take on Apple's iTunes by launching a new "high-resolution" music download service and portable player.

Appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, the 66 year old artist unveiled the new music player, Pono. To launch next year, Pono will offer a music download store, a line of portable music players and the ability to convert audio files from digital to analogue.

According to Rolling Stone, Young explained that the digital-to-analogue conversion will “present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions."

In his memoirs, titled Waging Heavy Peace, Young claimed that he and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs had been working together to improve the audio quality on the iPod. "I have consistently reached out to try to assist Apple with true audio quality, and I have even shared my high-resolution masters with them," he writes. He goes on to state that his will "force iTunes to be better and to improve quality at a faster pace."

Young teamed up with Craig Kallman, chairman of Atlantic Records, in mid-2011 to build the Pono team. Kallman told Rolling Stone, "This has to be an industry-wide solution. This is not about competing – this is about us being proactive... This is all about purely the opportunity to bring the technology to the table."

Warner Music Group - Atlantic's parent company - has now reportedly signed on for the project, with other major labels showing great interest. Home to Muse and The Black Keys, Warner has also converted its catalogue of 8,000 albums to high-resolution sound.