Musician Neil Young’s Kickstarter for the PonoPlayer, a high-resolution digital music player, reached the $1 million mark with its fundraising shortly after launching and, now that the Kickstarter has completed, has seen a total of $6.225 million raised for what is essentially a very high-spec MP3 player.
The Pono Kickstarter page has, since the funding ended, left a few messages for those who backed the device. Chief among these is the following: “We thank the community for their love and confidence in making us the 3rd most funded project in Kickstarter history.”
Granted that’s not a very long history but Ars Technica points out that in terms of cash raised the PonoPlayer has only been beaten by Pebble’s smartwatch and the Ouya gaming console. It’s especially interesting that the top three Kickstarter projects are all tech-related and unusual in that each of the podium-holders are a very different piece of hardware compared to their neighbors.
Now it is on to finalising the hardware for the PonoPlayer. That shouldn’t take all that long as the Kickstarter estimates that the first devices will be making their way to backers in October this year, with a second wave of devices going out in December. If the fundraising is any indication, there might not be enough supply to keep up with demand for a while.
Source: Ars Technica