Sony Walkman turns 30
July 1st, 2009 by Mark Gresham in Music news
On July 1, 1979, thirty years ago today, the original Sony Walkman made its public debut as the world’s first portable music player, making delivery of pre-recorded music on-the-go truly practical for the first time, and freeing listeners to take their tunes with them wherever they liked, essentially hands-free.
The grandfather of today’s hand-held digital audio players sold for $340 and weighed a little under one pound. Although retailers were initially reluctant due to the Walkman’s high price, Sony sold over 30,000 in the first month alone, securing its place on store shelves. It also pushed the popularity of the compact audio cassette format higher than vinyl for a time until eventually replaced in popularity by compact discs.
While an international standard for compact audio cassette tapes had been around since the mid-1960s, battery operated recorders were comparatively large, heavy, clunky, of very poor sound quality by comparison, and not truly portable.
Sony originally planned for the product to be sold world-wide but under different names in different countries, starting six months after its debut in Japan. But word of the player and the Walkman name had already spread world-wide. When Sony co-founder Akio Morita went on a business trip to Europe, the adults he met had already been told by their children to “Ask Mr. Morita where I can get a Walkman!” The name eventually became so ubiquitous and synonymous with portable stereo audio that by 1986 it was included in the Oxford English Dictionary.
(Photo courtesy Sony)
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I still have my “original” Sony Walkman purchased 30 years ago at Neiman Marcus, here in Atlanta. And, yes, $340 was a pile of money to blow on a portable music player, but, once you heard what music sounded like through those stereo headphones injecting the tunes into your head…you were hooked. Incidentally, mine had packaging from Sony that called it the Sony “SOUNDABOUT”,(reference your comment about Sony’s marketing plan for different names for the product in different countries). My original headphones and box are long gone, but the rest still works perfectly. BTW, notice the orange button on top of the player ?…It was an interesting feature..if you pushed it while listening to music, you and the SECOND listener (it had TWO headphone jacks) could hear whatever came through the built-in microphone over the dropped volume music. I guess it was a strange attempt at some kind of safety feature. I remember my girlfriend used it to talk dirty to me while we listened to music together…so much for safety features ! Happy anniversary Sony !