What does Neil Young's new digital archive mean for the future of music?

Neil Young is an ornery old cuss, but he's a forward-thinking one. The veteran musician has been unabashed in his disdain for the streaming music revolution on account of the fact he feels it is a detriment to the quality of the sound. Because of this, for years he has made it his goal to bring the world compression-free digital music. This dream will now be manifested in a whole new website dedicated to the career of Young — past, present and future — and it could be a sign of what the world of music will look like someday. Or maybe it will just be another eccentric idea from Young that fails to grab a general audience, à la the Pono, his digital media player that also dreamed of high-resolution audio but died a quiet death after three years of existence.

Young took to Facebook a little while back to explain his future plans for NeilYoungArchives.com, which is going to be a one-stop shop for all things Neil Young going forward. It's a place where you will be able to hear all his old music, in high-resolution audio naturally. Beyond that, it will be filled with historical curios from his lengthy, storied career. All new albums will be released there first. Unreleased albums from his archives will be there first. If you want tickets to an upcoming Young concert, well, you can probably guess where they will be initially available. Meanwhile, Young has promised to be actively involved in the curation of the site on a daily basis, including writing the smallest of updates. 

This all comes at a price, to be fair, though it is far from an exorbitant one. You can pay $1.99 per month or get a full year for $19.99. Some aspects of the archives will be free, but obviously Young wants you to splash a little cash to get the cool stuff. It's not surprising an artist has taken this approach. The only odd part is that it is a 72-year-old man who had the idea first.

The music industry has changed tremendously over the last decade-plus. The internet led to a sea change in the way people consume music. If you aren't an audio-fidelity aficionado who is obsessed with vinyl, you stream your music from some service. Maybe you pay for it. Young has seen the landscape shift, and he has decided this is the best way forward.

It's not an entirely out-of-left-field idea. You may recall when Tidal first tried to take over the digital music realm and albums were being released exclusively on the service, which of course cost money. It was a huge moment in the so-called streaming wars. The thing is, when was the last time you heard anybody talk about Tidal? Exclusive releases didn't light the world on fire. Taylor Swift acquiesced to putting her albums on streaming sites. If Taylor Swift can't fight the winds of change, maybe Neil Young is tilting at windmills.

On the other hand, if you are a Neil Young fan, you probably remember a world where paying for music was the norm. Young is assuredly not expecting casual fans to pay for access to his archives. He's betting on his die-hard fans to be happy to give him 20 bucks a year to hear his new stuff and some of his unreleased old stuff. Leaving some of his archives free to the public is the taste he is offering to try and get you hooked. It will be fascinating to see how this works when the archives, and the paywall, go live June 1.

What if other artists followed in his footsteps? What if somebody in the prime of his or her career, like the aforementioned Swift, gave this a try? Can it work? Will people bristle at Young's request for cash in exchange for his life's work? They can go on Spotify and listen to dozens of similar artists for free or as part of an extant subscription. Young has not rested on his laurels, and he has not let the world pass him by. It's just a matter of finding out if this time he is truly onto something.