Neil Young launches new online music archive, livestreaming concert tonight

You probably know that Neil Young has an interesting relationship with streaming services, and his latest attempt to offer high-quality streams of his music is the Neil Young Archives, a new website that opens today. You have to log in via Facebook, Google, or by making a NYA account, and then you’ll see Neil’s open letter that explains how things work. Here’s an excerpt:

There are three distinct ways to explore my music on this site. Each one has its advantages.

1. You can view all songs organized chronologically in the file cabinet, giving you a list view of everything I have released–you will find some unreleased things in here, too.

2. To go a little deeper, you can view all recordings as an info card, sliding chronologically in either direction left to right, to listen and view detailed information about the recording of every song.

3. Lastly, the most comprehensive view is the timeline. Here you can view all of my albums on a chronological timeline, with touring information; relevant events in our lives, and my books, videos, and films. The NYA timeline will also include galleries and videos–any content that might lie outside the scope of an album, film, video or particular recording.

Neil is using a streaming service called Xstream to get the highest possible sound quality for his site, and he writes: “You can enjoy the absolute highest digital audio quality music listening. There is no better sounding digital than through Xstream by NYA. Your player window will be filled with green and a FULL RESOLUTION message will appear. This is a good opportunity to switch to 320 and listen for a bit, then go back to Master. That will show the difference.” Streaming access on the site is free until June 30, 2018, and after that you can sign up for a subscription “at a very modest cost.”

There’s also a tutorial video that you can watch below. The above screenshots are of the file cabinet and the timeline.

Neil is launching the site in conjunction with the release of his new album The Visitor. To celebrate the launch, Neil is also livestreaming his concert tonight (12/1) in his hometown of Omemee, Ontario. The stream begins on Neil’s Facebook at 8 PM Eastern and ends at 9:30. There will be a donate button, and proceeds go to the Bridge School.

There’s plenty of other info that you can learn on the site. Sign up now and get exploring, Neil Young fans!