A long-time – and vociferous – sceptic regarding the technological shift to digital audio, and a performer who hit the headlines recently for removing his music from Spotify over its support of Joe Rogan and his podcast, there’s no doubt that Neil Young has always been a performer who stands up for what he believes in. Allowing his music to be available digitally in the best format possible has led Young’s team to create the Neil Young Archives with the help of OraStream’s technology – and the company sees the project as “an excellent model for artists’ ownership of how and where they’d like to release music to their listeners.”
As such, the Neil Young Archive’s users have been able to access and stream music videos for the new album BARN by Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 24-bit/192kHz lossless audio quality as the OraStream platform supports hi-res audio in video streaming the same way it is done for music delivery; as bandwidth increases, the video and music will increase in audio quality to the highest levels possible, subject only to the quality of the original music source.
Young says: “It feels great to be able to hear this sound dimension and quality while watching a movie! Being able to watch a video and feel the sound the way it was made is really a great experience.”
You can watch the video release for Welcome Back in hi-res audio here. Or via the embedded player below
The new feature was first added in two films; Distant Camera and Horseback for NYA’s subscribers to hear and feel these records in high res audio while watching the films. Since then, the Neil Young Archives added hi-res sound to the new music tracks from the new album, BARN.
Based on a 2021 IFPI survey, video streaming accounts for 22% of weekly music engagement, compared to subscription audio streaming (such as Spotify Premium and Apple Music) which accounts for 23% – while ad-supported, free tiers of audio streaming make up 9%.
Neil Young, who has put his name and reputation on the quest of better audio for many years, says: “It feels great to be able to hear this sound dimension and quality while watching a movie! Being able to watch a video and feel the sound the way it was made is really a great experience.”
The Neil Young Archives is a website and app where fans have access to Neil Young’s audio, video, memorabilia, notes, lyrics, original manuscripts and an eight-page newspaper. It’s where Neil is continually adding new content and where his fans and he communicate with each other. It went live a little over a year ago and has tens of thousands of paid members. A subscription costs $19.99 per year. Visit https://www.neilyoungarchives.com