The website companion to Neil Young’s Pono player that offers high quality music downloads has been taken down with no date given for it’s return.

Over the weekend ponomusic.com was taken down without warning. The site offers a digital store specialising in high quality music files, which work with Neil Young’s high quality Pono player. Whilst they have no timeframe for it’s closure right now it’s not the end of PonoMusic just yet.

Pono had to shut down their online store due to the new $10m purchase of Omnifone, the digital content provider that supplied Pono’s music offerings. Part of Omnifone‘s buyout deal resulted in the termination of connections, which seems like a kamikaze move, especially with stores like Pono which exclusively used Omnifone since their inception.

In the wake of their terminated contract PonoMusic began transitioning to 7 Digital, a leading music provider. Unfortunately they weren’t able to complete their transition in time for Omnifone’s abrupt ousting of their business connections. Now Pono and 7 Digital are working together to get the store back up as soon as possible, though currently they don’t know when that could be beyond “several weeks”.

In a full statement Pono said:

One of the key infrastructure partners – Omnifone – has recently been acquired by a large company. An impact of this purchase is that all Omnifone’s supply relationships are being terminated, effectively immediately. Omnifone has been the exclusive content provider for PonoMusic.
In early anticipation of this change, some time ago we began, and subsequently concluded, negotiations to move our content provision to 7 Digital, the leading independent music content/services platform. This process of transition is now well underway, but not yet complete. Please rest assured that our contractual relationships with all the major music labels remain fully intact and will transition to our new platform. 
During this transition, the ponomusic.com store will be under construction and not available. Our music library will be temporarily suspended for purchases effective July 20th. We ask that you please complete any music purchases you were considering or wish to make, by Tuesday, July 19th.
Our PonoCommunity will continue as normal and we will keep everyone up to date with our progress.
With our partners at 7 Digital, we will determine the timeframe of this transition. Right now, we believe this transition process will take several weeks to achieve. In the meantime, please stay connected to the site and the community and keep listening to and enjoying the music you have. This transition is our highest priority and will remain so until we are live again and providing our customers with seamless access to music in the highest quality available. 
On a positive note, this partnership brings fresh opportunities to improve our overall service. We look forward to having new titles to offer you. 
Thank you for your understanding, patience, and support.
The PonoMusic Team.