Death of the Walkman – a history of portable music players

Any music fan will have been somewhat heartbroken by this week’s news that Sony will no longer produce the cassette Walkman. Although most of us haven’t used a cassette player in years it was a defining piece of electronics that paved the way for the multimedia and multi-functional music players of today. It was undoubtedly the iPod of its generation. Take a trip down memory lane below to examine the evolution of music players over the last 50-odd years.

1954: The portable transistor radio

Back in 1954 the American company I.D.E.A. released the world’s very first portable transistor radio. The Regency TR-1 radio measured 3″ x 5″ x 1.25″ and featured an analog AM tuner. In a strange prediction of things to come (we are talking to you iPod), the Regency came out in a variety of colours over the years, ranging from a simple bone white to pearlescent lavender and lime. The TR-1 tuned stations by a simple gold dial and played through a low-fidelity monophonic speaker. It retailed for £32 ($49.95) back in the day, which would make it cost around £205 ($325) today.

1962: First ever portable stereo

The legendary Henry Kloss developed the very first portable stereo back in 1962 when he released the KLH Model 11, and has since created some of the most stunning and best sounding stereos in the world. The KLH Model 11 was the first transistorized stereo system, and featured a record player, amplifier and two speakers which all folded neatly into a “suitcase” for easy transportation. While the stereo only ran on A/C power, not batteries, it was still a milestone in the development of portable music players.

1964-1975: The 8-track portable stereo

8-track or Stereo 8 as it is also called was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Motorola and RCA Victor Records. Within a few years 8-tracks were commonly used in cars, home stereo systems and as portable style boomboxes but by the late 1970s the 8-track had been more or less killed off by cassettes.

1965-1980s: The portable cassette tape player

In 1965, Philips released the first ever compact cassette tape. Originally designed for recording dictations and other boring stuff, the cassette recorded up 45 minutes of sound on single 1/8-inch tape. To compliment Philps’ innovation in recording media, they released the battery-powered Carry-Corder 150 cassette recorder. It ran on 5 flashlight batteries and weighed in at over 3 pounds (fully loaded). Later, Mercury Records would release a selection of music on Philips cassettes for about $6 a piece. Cassette tapes would dominate the portable music world for the next 20 years.

1979: The Sony Walkman

Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s Sony was the king of miniaturization, and in 1979, they released the first truly self-contained portable music system, the TPS-L2 Walkman cassette player. The Walkman’s real innovation was its size, measuring only slightly larger than a cassette tape itself and unlike other cassette players you listened to it using headphones rather than via small loudspeakers. Operating on AA batteries, it ushered in a new era of portability. The original Walkman retailed for 33,000 Japanese Yen, which would be around £255 today. The Walkman went on to sell millions of units and spawned numerous variations and imitators for many years after its initial release; sadly it will no longer be produced.

1985:  Sony Discman D-50
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A year after CDs were introduced Sony produced the first ever portable digital music player, the Sony Discman D-50.

Just slightly larger than a CD case, the player offered all of the great audio quality that digital recordings had to offer.

1992: MiniDisc

MiniDisc was announced by Sony in September 1992 and released that November for sale in Japan and December for the USA and Europe. MiniDiscs ended up being popular in Japan and Asia as a digital upgrade from cassette tapes, but didn't take off as much elsewhere. The actual disc is housed in a cartridge with a sliding door, similar to the casing of a 3.5" floppy disk. MiniDiscs can be recorded and edited very quickly even on portable machines.

1996 - onwards: The MP3 player

The world's first company to announce a portable MP3 player was Audio Highway who announced its Listen Up player on September 23, 1996. In 1998 the Rio PMP300 was launched by Diamond Multimedia and proved to be a huge success and lead to a high-profile lawsuit, but there was no stopping the popularity of the MP3 players from this point onwards and soon brands such as Creative were launching their players.

2001: The iPod

Apple introduced the first-generation iPod on October 23, 2001, with the slogan "1,000 songs in your pocket". The first iPod had a black and white LCD (liquid-crystal display) screen and featured a 5 GB hard drive with a rechargeable battery and was priced at US$399. It didn’t necessarily do that much differently under the hood from other MP3 players, but it had a sleek design, a unique and simple navigational system. Initially, the iPod only supported Macintosh computers, and the only way to get music tracks was to record from your own CDs or from (often illegal) downloads on the Internet. In 2003, Apple released iTunes and opened their iTunes store, which made it easy to purchase legal music downloads for just 99 cents a track. Shortly afterwards, they introduced a Windows-compatible version of their software. The iPod is now on it’s 7th generation and your bog standard iPod Classic has a 160GB harddrive, can hold 40,000 songs, have a battery life of 200 hours, and can play video, and it cost about £193.