Neil Young is in the process if creating an online streaming service housing every song he has ever made since 1963.
The project being built at neilyoungachives.com will be the natural extension of what Young planned with his Archive box series. The achieve box stalled after volume 1 only took the fans to 1972.
When I saw Young’s manager Elliot Roberts at SXSW some years ago I asked him when the project would get to the point when the most recent box contained the most recent album. His response, “not in your lifetime”.
Considering Volume 1 was released in 2009 and Volume 2 is nowhere to be seen, let alone Volumes 3, 4 and 5, I tend to agree with Elliot’s prediction … until now.
Neil is an audiophile. Streaming has not been his friend until now. “To avoid the lack of high audio quality presented by today’s streaming technology, NYA is using Xstream Music high resolution streaming by OraStream, an idea that allows the listener to hear all of the music available at his or her current listening station,” Young says.
“Most streaming services today have 2 or 3 tiers of quality. Xstream Music has 15,000 tiers and changes seamlessly to adapt to your current bandwidth and use all the data available. Because of that the music is always the best it can be, he says.
The collection will start with the first song Young recorded in Canada in 1963.
The online project was originally planned to accompany the Blu-Ray versions of the boxes but now Neil has dispensed of the physical for the digital.
A launch date for the online archive is yet to be announced.
