FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
IN THIS PHOTO: The Sony Walkman debuted in Japan in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy
Part Four: The Sony Walkman
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IN this feature…
I am highlighting technological breakthroughs in music. This can either be something to do with software and an advance that helped in terms of music production, or it can be a device or hardware that has changed how we listen to music. I have already talked about the iPod coming through in 2001. Today, I am spotlighting the Sony Walkman. I talked about this hugely important piece of music history in 2019 when celebrating the fortieth anniversary. I think, maybe, the Sony Walkman is the most important music device there has ever been. Some might say that is a gramophone but, as they are quite different, I am referring to how the Sony Walkman is portable and allowed one the chance to experience music that way. Although the Sony Walkman was quite expensive when it came to the U.K., I recall having one in the late-1980s/early-1990s; it was my gateway to the Sony Discman - that would be part of my world years later. I think people associate the Sony Walkman with being popular in the 1980s, but I knew a lot of people who had one in the 1990s. There is this retro value to owning one today. I can imagine an original Sony Walkman goes for a lot of money! I may feature the Sony Discman in a future article, but I think it was more unreliable than the Walkman equivalent; it often skipped and was a bit precarious when it came to playing C.D.s. The Sony Walkman, to me, revolutionised how the world listened to music; the fact that one could take an album and artist with them!
Before continuing on my thought, I want to bring in a couple of articles that discuss the history/legacy of the Sony Walkman. In 2014, The Verge gave a short history:
“The first of Sony's iconic portable cassette tape players went on sale on this day, July 1st, back in 1979 for $150. As the story goes, Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka got the wheels turning months before when he asked for a way to listen to opera that was more portable than Sony's existing TC-D5 cassette players. The charge fell to Sony designer Norio Ohga, who built a prototype out of Sony's Pressman cassette recorder in time for Ibuka's next flight.
After a disappointing first month of sales, the Walkman went on to become one of Sony's most successful brands of all time, transitioning formats over the years into CD, Mini-Disc, MP3 and finally, streaming music. Over 400 million Walkman portable music players have been sold, 200 million of them cassette players. Sony retired the classic cassette tape Walkman line in 2010, and was forced to pay a huge settlement to the original inventor of the portable cassette player, Andreas Pavel. But the name lives on today in the form of new MP3 players and Sony's Walkman app. They heyday of the Walkman may be over, with kids today baffled and disgusted by the relative clumsiness of cassettes. But the habit it spawned — listening to music wherever and whenever you want — is bigger than ever”.
I wonder why the Sony Walkman was so successful and practical, whereas the Sony Discman was flawed and did not provide the same convenience and quality? Certainly, I relied on my Sony Discman when I was growing up, but I found the Sony Walkman much more robust and durable. It seems a shame that we do not really have a modern equivalent of the Sony Walkman. There are modern iPod designs, but not the Sony Walkman as such – another reason why the originals are in-demand and selling for a big price! There is a sleeker new design which is available, but it seems very similar to how you would listen to music on a Smartphone – more like an iPod than a traditional Sony Walkman. I am talking more about something modern and multi-functional where playing a cassette is possible. As cassette sales were huge last year, there are clearly a lot of people who have a lot of love for the old-skool format. A redesign of the Sony Walkman would be great and prove very popular. Smartphones are fine, but I feel there is this desire for physical music and having that tangible aspect. The legacy and influence of the Sony Walkman is huge! The Irish Times described how one was afforded personal freedom regarding their music listening – and how there was stiff competition on the market soon enough:
“The transistor radio started that shift. A decade before Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Sony, instructed his staff to design a portable, playback-only stereo, kids were listening to T Rex and Mud on similarly sized plastic boxes. The Walkman gave them greater control.
It ushered in the compilation tape (nobody then called them “mixtapes”) and its use as a reliably ineffective seduction aid. Somewhere there is academic research proving that no woman has ever listened to all 20 tracks on any tape proffered by any eager suitor. It doesn’t matter if, using brief pieces from early Brian Eno recordings as stuffing, you filled the C-90 from the first tape leader to the last. Nobody cared that you’d given it a hilarious name and collaged a cover from last week’s NME. “Erm … What did I think of the Nipple Erectors track? It … had a great beat?”
The machine also advanced the notion of personal electronics as fashion. We’re not talking about the original TPS-L2 here. Retailing at a million pounds (well, plenty anyway), that first model had all the portability of a fridge freezer and all the design flair of a Trabant motorcar. The TPS-L2 actually came with a sling that allowed you to wear it like a satchel. It was the lovely, neat WM-2 that opened the long path towards YouTube videos in which maniacs “unbox” the latest iPhone. (In apparent tribute, there is now a video on that site of a restaged WM-2 unboxing.) The orange-padded headphones were as much a symbol of the age as the leg warmer or the vinyl tie. Never before had technology become an essential part of an era’s daywear.
The Sony Walkman fought its corner in a series of interlocked wars. In most territories, competitors had to name their reverse-engineered product a “personal stereo”, but, in German-speaking countries, courts concluded that “Walkman” had become the accepted generic term. This is why Hoover really would prefer you to call their most famous appliance a “vacuum cleaner”.
The rise of the CD forced Sony to develop the famously terrible Discman, a device that worked only a little better than strapping a turntable round your waist. There were MiniDisc versions. You can still buy an MP3 incarnation. But streaming on the smartphone ultimately annihilated the personal-stereo market”.
I wanted to salute a huge moment for music: in 1979, when the world became aware of this new breakthrough called the Sony Walkman. Its impact has resounded through the decades and, today, we take for granted the fact we can listen to music on the move. In the 1980s, it was a really new thing, and I can only imagine how excited people were (I was born in 1983)! I shall leave things there but, when it comes to music/listening hardware, there are few more important than…
THE Sony Walkman.