The Sony Walkman was not only a revolutionary device, it was revolutionary on a cultural scale.
Until the 1970s, listening to music was considered to be a social activity. Handheld transistor radios had existed since the 1950s, but they didn't let the user choose specific songs to listen to. Even the first portable cassette players were suitcase-sized boomboxes with stereo speakers.
In the context of technology, a device is usually called "revolutionary" if it improves upon its predecessors to the point of making them obsolete, but the Walkman was something else. It was the first device designed for private music listening.
The entry-level Sony Walkman WM-33, shown here in red, features a built-in graphic equalizer on the front. This particular model is highly desirable among collectors we're told, especially the red model as seen in the photo.
With the Walkman you could play any song, anywhere, anytime, before the same was possible for movies, e-books or video games. Like smartphones today, it was accused of fostering detachment and isolation, but it also created new ways for people to connect.
Masthead credit: The Man Cave Broadway
A Shift in Perception
In 1978, Sony launched the laptop-sized TC-D5 stereo cassette player. Sony's co-founder, Masaru Ibuka, would take it on flights to listen with headphones. He then had an idea: take the Pressman handheld cassette recorder released the same year, remove the speaker and recording mechanism, and add a stereo amplifier.
The Sony first Walkman (TPS-L2) was born:
The original Sony Walkman TPS-L2, launched in 1979, revolutionized personal audio with its compact design and dual headphone jacks. Image credit: Yoshikazu Takada
Sony's other co-founder, Akio Morita, realized that such a device wasn't going to sell with the headphones of the time, which weighted as much as the device itself. Ibuka remembered hearing about a project aimed at creating affordable 50g on-ear headphones. This prototype became the MDL-3L2.
Morita ordered 30,000 units of the TPS-L2 – twice as many as the monthly sales of the best-selling tape recorder in Japan. That model had two headphone jacks, as Sony apparently didn't want to get blamed for breaking up couples.
The name chosen for the package was Walkman.
Image credit: The Walkman Archive
The product was launched on July 1, 1979, and by the end of the month it had only sold 3,000 units. Back then, wearing headphones in public was like wearing sunglasses indoors. Sony employees were then tasked to ride trains using a Walkman to normalize this behavior. By the end of August, all 30,000 units had been sold.
The next step was launching the TPS-L2 worldwide. Initially, Sony marketed it under the name Soundabout in the U.S. and Stowaway in the UK. However, by then, the company realized that the name Walkman had already become world-famous due to tourists visiting Japan.
Image credit: demiwang
More Than One Walkman
Modern franchises like Stranger Things and Guardians of the Galaxy showcase some of the earliest Walkman models. If your only exposure to the Walkman comes from these shows, you might think it was a bulky and unattractive device. In reality, by 1983, the flagship Walkman wasn't much bigger than the cassettes it played, and shipped with an in-ear headset.
The belt-clipping Walkman II, launched in 1981, is credited with popularizing the personal stereo worldwide. From that year onward, virtually every electronics company was selling a Walkman clone. The Oxford Dictionary even added the word "Walkman" in 1986.
The Walkman itself had several series, featuring options like recording and radio. Especially famous was the yellow Walkman Sports series, which offered shock and water resistance. This version capitalized on the aerobics craze of the 1980s, sparked by Jane Fonda's VHS tapes.
The Sony Walkman WM-AF59 combined auto-reverse cassette playback with an integrated AM/FM radio tuner. As a sports model, it offered waterproofing and was rated for 7 hours of playback using two AA batteries. Image credit: Ham Hock
Like any new technology, the idea of wearing headphones on the street raised concerns. In 1982, Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, banned the use of Walkmans in public, fearing pedestrian accidents. The ordinance is still in place.
The Walkman DD (Direct Drive) series was one of Sony's most iconic and high-end portable cassette players, introduced in 1982. The direct drive motor provided stable and accurate tape playback, resulting in superior sound quality. Its compact, durable design made it a favorite among audiophiles. Some models featured a quartz-locking mechanism for even greater precision. Image: hdboy88
Not surprisingly, the Walkman and its clones appeared in some of the most iconic 1980s movies, including The Terminator, Footloose, and Ghostbusters II.
One of the best examples is the 1985 hit Back to the Future, where the protagonist travels to 1955 and uses a Walkman clone to wake up his father, who has no idea what the device is.
The compact cassette was an analog format, so the Walkman couldn't detect when each song started. Even if it could, skipping wouldn't be instant, as the tape had to roll forward.
Duplicating a mixtape was the early physical version of sharing a playlist.
Late Walkman model featuring the "Mega Bass" branding, which was supposed to enhance low-end sound for cassettes and headphones of that era. The feature became a hallmark of Sony's Walkman line and subsequent music playback devices.
On the other hand, cassettes were recordable, allowing you to create a "mixtape" with songs from the radio and other cassettes. Duplicating a mixtape was the early physical version of sharing a playlist.
The Irreplaceable Removable Cassette
The Walkman dominated portable music for two decades, despite Sony's own attempts to replace it with devices using the digital formats it developed. These devices offered cleaner sound and precise skipping to the next song.
By far, the most successful of these was the CD-based Discman, launched in 1984.
Initially, compact discs were a new technology, and most people didn't have enough of them to justify buying a Discman. Early models were also bulky, relying on physical shock resistance mechanisms to prevent skipping during movement. Later models used a RAM cache for this purpose.
The Sony Discman D-145, a popular portable CD player from the mid-90s. Image credit: MiNe
Another issue was that CD recorders only became affordable in the late 1990s, finally allowing users to create mix CDs. Even then, no matter how you looked at it, a CD wouldn't fit in your jeans pocket. By 2000, the Discman was rebranded as the CD Walkman.
Having failed to popularize the Digital Audio Tape (DAT) among consumers, Sony launched the floppy-shaped MiniDisc format in 1992. In the U.S., it suffered from the Audio Home Recording Act, which restricted dedicated consumer digital recorders (but not computers) to creating read-only copies of songs. However, in Japan, the format remained popular well into the 2000s.
The Headphones Live On
Sony completely dropped the ball with the "Network Walkman" in the early 2000s, which used flash memory. The MP3 format was already dominant among users and competitors, but Sony didn't initially support it. Instead, the SonicStage app required converting songs into Sony's proprietary ATRAC format, which imposed many restrictions on transferring songs to other devices.
Once the Apple iPod became widely available, the entire Walkman brand fell out of favor. The cassette Walkman was discontinued in 2010 after selling 200 million units. Yet ironically, the Network series that ended the Walkman's popularity is the only one that still exists.
As a brand, the Walkman outlasted even the iPod. Most of the current models feature headphone jacks and premium materials to accurately convert the digital signal into analog rather than relying on the headset to do so.
It's hard to even imagine the world without the Walkman. Would headphones have ever become popular? Would Apple have released the iPod, or would it have remained a premium computer company to this day?
The Walkman had one historical role: to make music portable. It's incredible how much more it accomplished.