Neil Young’s PonoMusic to seek further funding

After raising more than $6 million through a Kickstarter campaign, Neil Young and his PonoMusic team have plans to gain additional funding from equity markets.

PonoMusic’s CEO John Hamm has said that while last month’s crowd-funding campaign allowed them to take the music download service and player to the manufacturing stage, and finish the website and its music store, the focus will now be on helping finance the company, its partnerships and the co-branding opportunities that have arose.

“We’re going to raise some equity capital on the back of that in May and June that will allow us to do a lot more of a company financing,” Hamm told TechCrunch.

Hamm said PonoMusic plan to hire “six or eight” engineers, a content team, and “four or five” marketers for its San Francisco headquarters.

Hamm revealed the first 10,000 players will ship this October and the rest in December, as the company didn’t realise they had to have a second production run on Kickstarter. Any devices ordered through their website between now and December will ship in December.

PonoMusic is the third most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time, setting out to raise $800,000 on March 15 and taking in $6.2 million on April 16 from 18,220 backers. PonoMusic’s US$399 device slides in third behind video game console Ouya, which raised $8.5 million and Kickstarter’s top earner, the Pebble Smartwatch, which raised $10.2 million.

The strategy to opt for a more traditional funding round come May was also used by Pebble and Ouya Inc. following their campaigns.

With a focus on ultra high-quality sound based on the framework of the Apple iPod, Neil Young’s most commercially-driven project has been lauded by both audiophiles and musicians – and having Bruce Springsteen as an investor and Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, Chairman Emeritus, Warner Bros. Records Mo Ostin and President, N. America Warner/Chappell Jon Plattt singing its praises has certainly helped.

Australians can soon pre-order the 128GB model PonoPlayer through PonoMusic.com, with a concrete date still to be announced. So far, no Australian distribution deals have been announced.