PonoMusic, the high-res audio project spear-headed by Neil Young, has pledged to work "day and night" to meet delivery times for its PonoPlayer, as the company admits that demand has exceeded the unit-level the company can make in time for its October release date.
A message from John Hamm, CEO of PonoMusic, to people who have pledged on Kickstarter, says the company has now hit the level of units that it expected to be able to deliver by October.
Hamm said, "While we were hopeful the demand would be as it is, we knew we'd be limited by some short-term supply chain constraints if we reached the 10,000 unit level for our October promises."
At the time of writing, the Pono project has some 12,527 Kickstarter backers, though around 2000 of those have pledged a smaller amount that doesn't include a PonoPlayer.
Hamm goes on to say that any further Kickstarter pledge options would now come with a December release date – with more 'Artist Signature Series' PonoPlayers expected to be announced.
"While we are 'sold out' for October shipments," Hamm continued, "we have opened up some additional availability of Yellow and Black PonoPlayers, with a delivery promise of December, 2014. And, no, at this point, we don’t know if that means 'before Christmas', but that would be our goal."
"Additionally, as new Artist Signature Series PonoPlayers are announced over the next couple weeks, they will also have a delivery date of December, 2014.
"We will be honing our forecasting methodology to align demand for PonoPlayers with some longer lead times on a few key parts, with the goal of shortening our delivery timeframes drastically in 2015."
Clearly, backing from big-name artists such as Arcade Fire, Beck, Foo Fighters and Norah Jones has worked.
Originally launched with an $800,000 goal, the PonoMusic campaign has currently raised more than $4.2 million, with 27 days still to go.
by Joe Cox
