Thu, 24 Jul 2008 Neil Young slams iTunes, iPod

Neil Young argues for better sounding digital sound

Jonny Evans

Veteran rock star, Neil Young, has slammed the iPod as a "Fisher Price toy", in which music sound quality has been dumbed down too far.

Young was speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech Conference, where he said: "Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway. Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.”

The star bemoaned the focus on convenience at the expense of high-fidelity in artistic expression during his speech. Music has become "like wallpaper", he said. "We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements," he observed.

His complaints echo those made by UK electronic music pioneer, Toby Marks, who has said: "I absolutely hate the fact that it’s possible to release music at the same quality it was created, yet the market has moved backward to something that’s little better than cassettes."

Young is a technologist himself, and plans to introduce a multimedia archive of his entire career on Blu-ray later this year - presumably with uncompressed audio. He hopes other musicians will follow his lead.

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