Neil Young's latest single isn't available on Neil Young's music service

Remember Pono, Neil Young’s high-resolution audio player? It was that super-expensive iPod that promised high-fidelity sound with software only a real Neil Young fan could appreciate.

But now, in an ironic twist, the first track off of Young’s latest album, EARTH, isn’t available on Pono. The track is a Tidal exclusive.

As first reported by Digital Music News, the 28-minute track “Love and Only Love” is currently available only on Tidal.

So what gives, Neil?

We reached out to Young’s agent for comment, but for now, it seems as if Neil is doing what is so popular for plenty of artists these days: window releases.

We’ve seen this with artists like Drake, Kanye West, Radiohead and Beyoncé -- they'll restrict streaming access to certain services and then make albums available for purchase at a later date. This is usually done because the artists (or their labels) are paid by the services for prime placement. 

The Pono was released last year to middling reviews. Not only is the player expensive ($400), the fact is, most users can't tell the difference between high-definition 24-bit recordings and recordings encoded at 256kbps or 320kbps (CD quality). 

That hasn't stopped the Pono from raising more than $12 million in funding, including $6 million from its original Kickstarter campaign. But now that the product is out, finding more people to take the plunge appears to be a challenge.

But we have to think that skipping an exclusive release on your own music service indicates that the Pono player hasn’t really taken off with Young’s fan base.

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