Updated 09/14/2019 – Sony is releasing a new Walkman. CNN says the 40th anniversary Walkman NW-A100TPS commemorative version is powered by Android. It has a USB-C port and up to 26 hours of battery life. That is more playing time than most smartphones can provide. It comes with a bunch of audiophile features including; S-Master HX digital amplifier, a DSEE HX processor, even a vinyl processor to give digital tracks the character of vinyl.
There will be a standard version, the Walkman NW-A105 for us mere mortals who can’t or won’t pay the commemorative. Price. cost and release date haven’t officially been announced.
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40 years ago Sony (SNE), not Apple, revolutionized the way we listen to music. The blue and silver Sony Walkman TPS-L2 was introduced in Japan on July 1, 1979. The original Walkman sold for around ¥33,000 ($150). For the first time, the Walkman let us take our music with us without bothering our neighbors. It replaced boomboxes and portable radios.
The Walkman wasn’t the first. It was the first affordable and manageable portable music player. German inventor Andreas Pavel’s Stereobelt was too clunky and expensive, so they never took off. Sony sold more than 50,000 in the first two months. CNN reports that in its heyday, the Walkman was as synonymous with portable music players as Kleenex became to tissue and Xerox was to copy machines.
The Walkman came to the US in 1980
The Walkman was introduced to the U.S. in 1980 and continued to sell well even through the CD era. Innovation kept Sony on top of the market. The 1981 Walkman II was barely bigger than a cassette tape. 1984’s Discman helped Sony stay on top of the portable music world. Sony sold 385 million units between 1979 and 2009 Walkmans.
My Walkman in college
Some argue that the Walkman finished off vinyl records. By the time the Walkman made its U.S. debut in 1980, the cassette was well on its way to overtaking vinyl. By 1983, cassettes were officially the best-selling format. at the Verge writes the Walkman was originally ridiculed for lacking the ability to record tapes. It was designed to play music. You could make a mixtape for your high-school sweetheart and listen to it together. The Walkman offered two 3.5mm headphone jacks (the same hardware that, until recently, found on the iPhone) in lieu of a speaker.
Apple iPod
The Verge notes that the Walkman’s popularity began to fade with the arrival of CDs. Its popularity was further eroded in 2001 after the introduction of the Apple iPod and digital downloads began to dominate. Tech historian Stewart Wolpin told USA Today that Sony could have dethroned Apple iPod and iTunes. He explained that Sony’s boss Sir Howard Stringer had completely siloed the company’s divisions so that the electronics business was kept separate from Sony’s recording and film divisions.
This kept Sony from building an iTunes/iPod-like integrated music player/music store solution … Sony would have been the only potential competitor to Apple had the Sony hardware and Sony content people been able to talk to each other.
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The 40th anniversary of the Walkman is not about nostalgia. The Walkman is important because before there was the Internet to change what people expected from life, there was the Walkman.
Music that was too daring for commercial radio or my parents in the early ‘80s made its way to me via cassettes made by other kids. Without the Walkman, I probably would never have learned of the B-52’s Rock Lobster, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, or Iggy Pop and the Stooges‘ Raw Power. The rise of the Walkman is the first loss of control that the recording industry still complains about.
The Walkman also inhibited our social skills. It predicted the rise of iPhone culture, a world where eye contact is as obsolete as a Bang & Olufsen audio system.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
GigaOM explains that IV’s peculiar brand of innovation involves acquiring old patents and using them to arm thousands of shell companies, whose sole business is to extract licensing fees from productive businesses.
