Pono Player was one of the early incarnations of today's ubiquitous DAPs. At the time it was announced in 2014, only Korea's Astell & Kern (which had just recently launched as a separate brand of iRiver) and fellow Korean audio player brand Cowon was there for audiophiles who wanted a dedicated player other than the typical smartphone. Onkyo and Pioneer also made DAPs the following year, so it was definitely the beginning of the hi res DAP market.
Today we see such DAPs overtaken largely by Chi Fi brands like FiiO, Shanling, Cayin, iBasso, Hiby etc along with Astell&Kern.
I'd say regardless of the player living up to the hype or not, Neil Young had a good idea to have at the time since there wasn't too many dedicated hi res players at the time and having a hi res music store to compete with HDTracks also wasn't a bad idea. That the ideas weren't executed well is the issue but tech history is littered with failures so it's not too surprising either.