Celebrating 45 years of the Walkman

And had a very racy advert...

It was a day that changed music forever. 

On Sunday, July 1, 1979, the Sony Walkman went on sale in Japan. From that moment on, for the first time, people could carry music with them wherever they went.

For Millennials and Gen Z, this has always been a fact of life, but the portable CD players, MiniDisc players, iPods and smartphones they’ve used can all trace their heritage back to that little plastic box, and the cassette nestled inside it.

Yes, transistor radios and boomboxes had offered portable music in the years before, but radios dictated what people listened to, and neither were socially acceptable in a cafe, library or on the bus.

But with a Walkman, lucky owners could simply pop on a pair of foam-covered headphones and shut out the world around them, whether studying, sunbathing or rollerblading in some jazzy hotpants.

The first generation, the TPS-L2, was launched in the UK as the ‘Stowaway’, and the ‘Sound-About’ in the US. Only later did the Walkman name spread across the globe, evolving from the company’s portable recording device the Pressman, designed for journalists.

By the mid-80s, Walkmans were everywhere, as were rival products – Panasonic, Toshiba and others all had their own versions, following in Sony’s footsteps as the world discovered the joy of their own personal DJ.

At almost £120 – around £760 today, a little less than an iPhone 15 or Samsung Galaxy S24 – they weren’t cheap, but despite the cost, the Walkman still became one of Sony’s bestsellers, massively exceeding expectations.

In the years and decades to follow, the Walkman underwent constant evolution, switching from aluminium to plastic to steel, small to even smaller, subdued tones to the bright yellow, splash-proof Sports Walkman, complete with sleek in-ear headphones.

In fact, the Walkman was also a pivotal moment in the design of earphones, the TPS-L2 being paired with one of the most compact and lightweight pairs seen back then.

But while it kicked off a thrilling new era in portable entertainment, the Walkman could not survive what it started.

First came the Discman and other portable CD players – terrible for running with but otherwise much more convenient that its predecessor. Hello, skipping an entire track instead of fast-forwarding? Dreamy.

Then came the MiniDisc, heralded as the future of digital music but in fact something of a flash in the pan, quickly overtaken by the MP3 player – and the daddy of those, the Apple iPod.

You might be surprised to learn however that not until 2010 – nine years after the release of the iPod – did Sony discontinue the Walkman cassette player, at the grand old age of 31. Over those three decades, 220 million Walkmans (Walkmen?) were sold.

What's in a name?

Hoovers. Jacuzzis. Tupperware. Bics.

Only the greats become synonymous with an entire genre of products, a process known as genericisation. 

And soon after its release, ‘Walkman’ became the name given to any portable cassette player, whether Sony or not.

How many billions of minutes were spent recording music off the radio at home to curate the perfect playlist is not known, but for many, it was a rite of passage during their teen years. Angst and hitting the stop button 0.01 seconds before the DJ started speaking, classic adolescent traits. 

Now 45 and retired (as can happen when you make billions of dollars), the Walkman is unfamiliar to today’s teenagers – except perhaps those who watch Stranger Things, in which it frequently cameos. But others will never understand quite how its arrival changed the musical landscape forever.

Nor will they experience the unique combination of joy and despair as failing batteries turned every song into the soundtrack for a psycho horror film, hilariously deep and distorted voices a far more entertaining low battery warning than today’s pop-up notifications.

But while listening to Spotify on a plane or Apple Music at the gym, they all have the Walkman to thank. 

True, if Sony hadn’t invented it, someone else would have. Yet in the hands of the Japanese tech behemoth, it led the way for decades, inspiring impersonations and copies, but none that could match its popularity and position in pop culture.

The Walkman’s batteries may have died, sometimes annoyingly quickly, but its legacy never will.