Canadian Musician Neil Young officially unveiled a new high-resolution music player and download service called the PonoPlayer.

The PonoPlayer was developed by Neil Young's digital music audio company, PonoMusic which he founded in 2012 along with Silicon Valley Entrepreneur John Hamm.

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PonoMusic reportedly collaborated with music equipment maker Ayre Acoustics for the development of the chips used for the player device.

The music player costs US$399 and comes with a 64 GB built-in memory that's expandable to 128 GB using a microSD card.

The streaming service already has over 600,000 songs available for download and may compete against the likes of Apple's iTunes Store and HDtracks.

The device comes with the PonoMusic app for desktop that allows customers to download and sync music to the player.

Neil Young claims that the PonoPlayer provides music with a higher quality sound than the current sound of CDs and MP3 audio formats, using high-resolution 24-bit 192kHz and is based on the FLAC format.

"With Pono, I'm trying to bring the goosebumps back. Technology is supposed to bring us a better life," Neil Young said. "And Pono is the exception that will bring us a better life."

Young criticizes the low sound quality of today's digital formats and said he intends to bring original music sound quality back to life with the new player device.

"Music has been turned into background noise. It's the 21st century. It's time to feel the technology." Young added. "We are bringing great technology back to the masses."

PonoMusic uses the word "pono" from a Hawaiian word that means righteousness.

TagsNeil Young, PonoPlayer, PonoMusic, Ayre Acoustics, Apple iTunes Stores, HDtracks, CD, MP3 Format, FLAC Format, Streaming Service, Pono