Jay Z’s Tidal is no longer the only player in the high-fidelity streaming world. Neil Young has announced that his Pono company has finalized their own hi-fi streaming service: it’s called Xstream. (Really.) “For more than eight months, I've been working with our small team to look for alternatives,” Young said in a post on the Pono website (according to CBC). “Finding a way to deliver the quality music without the expense and to bring it to a larger audience has been our goal.” The service is described as “adaptive,” meaning, “Xstream plays at the highest quality your network condition allows at that moment and adapts as the network conditions change.”
While final pricing for Xstream has yet to be revealed, Young also spoke on the lessons he learned from launching Pono in 2014. “All songs should cost the same, regardless of digital resolution. Let the people decide what they want to listen to without charging them more for true quality,” he said. “That way quality is not an elitist thing. If high-resolution costs more, listeners will just choose the cheaper option and never hear the quality.” Coincidentally, Xstream is also the name of the fictional streaming company started by Jamal and Hakeem in the show “Empire,” as Exclaim points out.
