
The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago - lnguyen
https://www.stereogum.com/2049762/the-first-sony-walkman-was-released-40-years-ago-today/
======
niftich
The UX of cassettes was very useful for sharing and swapping music or speech,
and for resuming where one left off. Because of the linear tape, the
cassette's "playback cursor" was stateful and independent from whether the
medium was read-only or not. Playback resumed at (nearly) the same spot as it
was last stopped, even if moved to a different player. Successor formats
didn't have this property.

Interestingly, Sony emulated the auto-resume feature in some Discman CD
players, and later it became common in car CD players, but there was no way to
maintain playback position after swapping players. Later, MP3 players
maintained their own playback state, but getting tracks on or off the device's
built-in or removable storage was with file-based interfaces that connected to
computers.

This stateful cursor functionality is only returning these days with URLs to
media-hosting sites that accept timecode parameters.

~~~
gchokov
I enjoyed reading your comment, and couldn't help but thinking how I miss this
time. The joy of bringing something physical to somebody - a cassette, a vinyl
- for their listening pleasure. The feedback loop from the act of giving and
receiving. This whole idea of physical sharing made the music more personal
and magical.

Nowadays I have shared playlist for family and friends, and it lacks magic.

~~~
livatlantis
I missed it too. So I went ahead and got an old, refurbished harman/kardon
cassette deck after months of research about different cassette and deck
varieties. Learnt about type 1 (ferric), type 2 (chromium dioxide) and type 4
(metal) cassettes.

And now when I get back from work in the evening, I put on a cassette whilst
making dinner. Or when I have friends over. And I let them pick the cassettes,
which is always rather exciting.

I listen to a lot of metal and classical music, so finding original cassettes
(even the really nice metal ones) isn't that hard at all. Plus they're cheap!
(Waaay cheaper than vinyl).

And if all that weren't enough, there are bands still putting out cassettes:
synthwave artists (Taurus 1984), indie bands (Tvivler), and even pop (Sigrid)!
And if I don't find artists I like, I can always make my own ;)

tldr: If you miss it, you can still go out get yourself a cassette deck and
enjoy it!

~~~
ekianjo
> a lot of metal and classical music

I find this part of your comment interesting because I have noticed such an
overlap among a number of people versed in music. I wonder if there is a good
way to explain this.

~~~
livatlantis
It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with:

\- complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4)

\- variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts)

\- storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom,
suffering, literature)

\- intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano
vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar)

\- mastery of musical instruments (particularly true in progressive metal, but
metal drummers, guitarists/bassists and keyboard players tend to play at a
very high technical level)

\- song length (like Seventh Wonder's "The Great Escape" at about 30 mins)

None of these individually are unique to either genre, but taken together, we
can start seeing quite a bit of an overlap.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
A surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of metal bands, and song
writers have borrowed heavily from classical. No end of interviews with rock
guitarists where they talk of listening to some violin piece and wanting to
honour or duplicate in on the guitar. No end of albums with a rock cover of
some classical piece, from The Agonist's a capella of Swan Lake through
several Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc.

Not forgetting a good few borrowing from the folk canon, and I don't just mean
late era Rainbow after Ritchie got his new girlfriend. :)

~~~
KozmoNau7
When I listen to Swedish death metal in particular, the tremolo picking and
riffs, combined with the distortion (almost always a dimed Boss HM-2) almost
sounds like a furious string section, somewhere around a cello-type sound. So
many songs could just as well have been pieces of classical music.

------
emptybits
Fond memories of Sony and the Walkman era. I worked part time for Sony from
the mid to late 1980s while I was a student, paying tuition bills. It was a
dream job for a consumer electronics nerd and budding AV enthusiast, getting
to demo and play with everything. Sony was still king of CRTs with XBR line of
Trinitrons consistently on top. (Back breakers to move across a room, BTW.)
Their ES family of audio amps and reference CD players were generally well
respected. Meh for speakers.

But back to Walkmans ... it was really eye-opening how multiple times per year
they would release new variations in size and materials and features or just
colours, and people would line up or pre-pay to get their hands on them.
People who already had Walkmans, often. The brand loyalty was mostly deserved
IMO, because Sony was really doing some original R&D.

Personal faves ... compact models in the drop & waterproof Sports line,
especially when issued in non-yellow. The solar model was weird, and not super
effective, but damn Sony was trying.[1] The metal, and great-sounding Boodo
Khan with supplied headphones was also pretty slick.[2] But from a materials
and engineering POV there were some gorgeous delicate little metal-body units
and at least one was actually the same size as a plastic cassette case
itself.[3] (It would expand slightly when you inserted your media.)

Long after I left Sony I tried to keep the brand faith with MiniDiscs for
years. But the MD's time has also come and gone...

[1]
[http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f107](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-f107)

[2]
[http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/dd-100](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/dd-100)

[3]
[http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-10)

~~~
spenczar5
Thanks for sharing this stuff.

It’s hard to resist thinking of iPhones when you talk about people lining up
to buy the latest model, even when they already have a Walkman. It makes me
daydream about Apple looking like Sony (a bit bloated, a bit of a faded giant)
in 30 years.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I'd say that Apple are already pretty much at that point, tbh.

------
StringyBob
Although The Walkman was released 40 years ago, Sony had actually made
something that will look familiar another 10 years earlier and was used on
Apollo moon missions: [https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-
gallery/5254hjpg](https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-gallery/5254hjpg)
[https://www.sony.net/Fun/design/history/product/1960/tc-50.h...](https://www.sony.net/Fun/design/history/product/1960/tc-50.html)

Incidentally, I only discovered this recently after hearing the Apollo 11
astronauts use one to play a prank on mission control while on the way back to
earth. You can hear this at the amazing
[https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/](https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/)
(definitely works best on desktop not mobile)

------
ignoramous
The Walkman is a classic case of how an entrenched competitor with deep
pockets couldn't really stand in the way of an innovative product. I point
this out because, whenever you come across an idea for a startup, you'd
inadvertently find one or more businesses already built around the idea,
sometimes with ginormous funding or income. Remember how iPod beat Walkman,
Firefox gazumped IE, Zoom sped past WebX, stripe pocketed payments: Find the
key pain points and try to solve them. Don't turn a blind eye [0] no matter
how difficult they might be to solve, you wouldn't know it until you try.

To quote mittermayr from a recent thread [1]:

> _Don 't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. People
> completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a runner-up, or
> even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the products
> I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the years
> compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least ten
> companies I can name at an instant that do almost exactly the same, yet I
> still make money doing the very same thing._

> _Appreciate the invaluable advantage a market-proven idea brings and focus
> on whatever its target audience lacks or loves most about the most-popular
> offering. It doesn 't mean you have to copy something (where's the fun in
> that), but consider this if you start working on something and then come
> across someone who's done the exact same thing with good success. Don't give
> up, use it._

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164873)

~~~
badamp
> Remember how iPod beat Walkman

No. No I don’t. Who the fuck was still using a Walkman in 2001?

~~~
rob74
While the portable CD players from Sony were branded "Discman", they later
used the "Walkman" brand for a range of featurephones (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_W580i))
explicitly designed as music players. So you could actually say that the
_iPhone_ ultimately beat the Walkman...

~~~
hef19898
How I loved these feature phones. Did everything I needed, playing music later
even e-mail also it was nowhere near as nice as Gmail. Youtube wasn't an
option, but the sound quality was at least on par with my Pixel 2. Also phones
were small enough to fit in every pocket.

------
tomhoward
A mid-80s Walkman is central to one of my earliest vivid memories.

Among the gifts I received for my 9th birthday in 1986 were (1) An AM/FM radio
Walkman (replete with the classic orange-padded on-ear headphones), and (2) a
plastic kite with an eagle on it.

The following day, I walked over to the park nearest our house, stood in the
middle of an open sports field, tuned my Walkman to the relatively new
Australian rock music station EON-FM, and launched my eagle kite.

Fairly soon, as I stood there proudly flying my kite on what was a solidly
windy day, the radio playlist transitioned into the intro to Money for Nothing
by Dire Straits.

To this day, I can still feel the visceral sensation of the buildup of that
intro and the sound explosion of that opening guitar riff, and in that moment
I knew what rock'n'roll music was all about.

I sometimes think back to that just-turned-9-years-old kid in the middle of
that field, flying that kite and having his mind blown by rock'n'roll blasted
through his brand new Walkman, and think "you're doin OK kid."

------
Daub
The complete genius of the Walkman was that it featured two headphone jacks.
Such a simple design decision, with such large ramifications. In total, the
Walkman is a classic example of a disruptive industry: creating new industries
and killing (or at least mortally wounding) old ones. I remember how
terminally moribund the industry-controlled pop charts had become before mix
tapes became a thing.

~~~
Zelphyr
And like the white iPod ear buds that came twenty years later, those orange
foam headphones were a status symbol. Simply walking around with them hanging
around your neck made you cool e.g.; Marty McFly at the beginning of _Back To
The Future_

I find it amusing that we went from relatively small Walkman headphones, to
tiny little Apple earbuds, to giant Beats headphones as the status symbol.

~~~
astrodust
Remember the old ridiculously huge cans from the 1970s with a quarter-inch
jack? They're back!

~~~
Zelphyr
That was my exact thought the first time I saw Beats headphones.

------
FabHK
One super useful feature was "Auto Reverse", allowing you to listen to both
sides of a tape without having to take the cassette out and flipping it. It
came out 3 years later, eg in the Sony WM-7.

One thing I learned while looking into this now is that Music Cassettes (MC)
have the magnetic recording tape, and then at both ends a "leader", which is
much stronger than the thin magnetic tape, so it doesn't break when the end is
reached. Furthermore, the leader is transparent, unlike the magnetic tape, and
so auto reverse could be triggered by an optical sensor (this website claims
that the WM 7 had an optical sensor - I thought Walkmen (Walkmans?) triggered
auto reverse from the mechanical pull when the tape reached the end.)

[http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-7](http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-7)

EDIT to add:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Tape_leaders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape#Tape_leaders)

~~~
thesmok
My Walkman senses when the supply spool stops rotating, and then reverses.

~~~
FabHK
That's what I thought would happen. I really wonder whether the WM-7 actually
has an optical sensor.

------
W-Stool
Don't forget the MiniDisc format that Sony also released years later under the
"Walkman" brand - for a while there it was an audio storage format and
playback hardware that briefly seemed ahead of its time. Sony, if nothing
else, were technical innovators during their best days. You knew the gear
wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.

~~~
JKCalhoun
> You knew the gear wasn't imagined and designed by a bunch of bean counters.

Hmmm.... Only later when they were marketing TV's?

Hated Sony for selling essentially the same TV with the same guts but leaving
out one chip (for example) so that "Picture in Picture" required you spend an
extra $500 on the high end model.

I always suspected it went something like this:

• Engineers describe the feature set they can deliver for a new TV.

• Bean counters determine it can be manufactured for $500.

• Marketing decide there will be three models: the F, the FX, and the FX+.
Determine pricing will be: $800, $1200, $1800.

• Marketing aligns the FX+ model with the engineers feature set — cross off
features to arrive at the FX — cross off even more to arrive at the F.

• Profit.

I shouldn't beat up on Sony though — all consumer electronics have been doing
something like this since ... when ... the 1950's or so?

~~~
forgotmypw3
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

~~~
JKCalhoun
Thanks, yeah, that's been our Brave New World. :(

~~~
badamp
The bean counters don’t set the price.. the market does. The bean counters are
there to predict how the market will respond and plan accordingly.

If they weren’t selling an adequate number of FX TVs at the higher price...
they would lower it. I guess they didn’t have to.

This has nothing to do with price discrimination either, which is when the
_same_ good or service is offered at different prices in different markets.

------
dugditches
Remember the cool kid having a Dual Deck stereo to make mixtapes. Having a
rats nest of tape when one failed.

Then that evolving into whoever had good internet and a CD Burner. Eventually
almost 'renting' music by returning a CD-RW with a new request list. Just how
much Discmans would skip with Burnt CD's versus Legitimate ones.

To spending $500 on a 128mb MP3 player. Compressing Mp3's into tiny WMA's.

~~~
samplatt
For an entity that's waged a multi-decade billion-dollar bloody and bitter war
against music piracy, Sony certainly have been instrumental in its
proliferation.

~~~
tw04
That's because the device group is a different entity than the media group.
Unfortunately the media group made enough money to start dictating things to
the device group which didn't single handedly ruin it, but definitely opened
the door to the Korean rivals that weren't bending over backwards to stop
consumers from using their devices.

~~~
megablast
It did ruin the minidisc, when Sony decided you couldn't get digital data from
the disc.

~~~
agumonkey
there's an alternate universe where MiniDisc replaced floppies in the early
90s and became the main storage format.

~~~
bluedino
Sony actually relased a slightly different MiniDisc for data storage with
computers.

[https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/10304629860270653...](https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews/status/1030462986027065345)

~~~
agumonkey
ohhh 1993.. I had no idea. I remember late 90s MD-data

------
galonk
My first walkman was a WM-22, not that much smaller than the first model. My
last was a WM-150, which was just a few mm larger than the actual tape in each
direction. It felt amazingly elegant.

(Took me a while to find out the model numbers by looking at image searches...
Sony always had the worst product "names".)

~~~
13of40
I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but several years ago I read that
the original was a little bigger than pocket sized, so Sony had shirts with
slightly bigger pockets made to demo it.

~~~
astrodust
It was the 1980s. Everyone had huge hair, huge shoulder pads and huge pockets.

------
keyle
Walking with music has completely changed my life. Can't imagine the amount of
ideas I've had and steps I've taken listening to music. With music I can cross
the entire city on foot and more.

footnote: do you remember when your batteries were running low and the
cassette would start slowing down the music? ;)

~~~
Gunvig
>>With music I can cross the entire city on foot and more.

I'll play Devil's Advocate here and say that the Walkman marked the beginning
of the end for people having spatial awareness and social skills in public
places.

You've only got to look at all the people meandering through our city streets
today; ears plugged with headphones, faces glued to screens –often walking
along with other people but yet completely detached from them, barely
conscious of the world around them– to see what the Walkman's legacy is.

Personally I prefer to listen to my music on headphones when I'm alone and at
a fixed location, rather than bimbling around, getting in other people's way
and with my safety compromised by having my senses plugged up. I've actually
seen cyclists riding in traffic with cycling helmets on [y'know, for the
safety!] but also wearing headphones. Makes me cringe every time I pass one,
knowing they've purposely cutting out the sounds of the traffic around them.

~~~
jacobush
Marillion presciently commented on that with these lyrics:

“Sheathed within the Walkman wearing the halo of distortion

Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”

~~~
MajorBee
> Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation”

Now _that_ is a lyric, goddamn.

~~~
jacobush
And there's more where that came from...

------
helloworld
The article links to a very funny video of today's kids trying to figure out a
Walkman:

[https://www.stereogum.com/1675629/watch-kids-try-to-use-a-
wa...](https://www.stereogum.com/1675629/watch-kids-try-to-use-a-walkman-for-
the-first-time/video/)

It's surprising to see how challenging the Walkman UI is to a complete novice.

~~~
dingaling
Not many UIs are intuitive.

I once tried to use a clickwheel iPod whilst my collleague was in a shop. I
had to give up and revert to the car stereo for music.

The majority of UX enlightenment comes from demonstration.

------
aphextim
I remember after they came out with portable CD players, at first lacking any
sort of skip protection it was pretty much unusable for any action sports.

At the time I enjoyed snowboarding at a local ski hill and I used my Walkman
well into the life cycle of CDs making remixes of all my favorites tracks off
CD's onto one cassette to listen to for the snowboarding session.

Best part, no skipping! (This was around 1997)

Some of the later Anti-Skip that was like 45-60 seconds would be doable,
unless you are going over some moguls but for cruising without much
hopping/tricks I'm sure some Anti-Skip in the 30s range would have sufficed.

------
Isamu
>It’s weird to think that, in the years before the Walkman, there was no way
to listen to music privately while out in public. There were ways to bring
music with you — on transistor radios, on boom boxes, on car stereos — but
they forced you to subject everyone around you to that music, as well.

No, the mono earpiece was a common thing with many transistor radios from the
60's. They didn't have stereo, no, so they didn't accomodate 2-ear pods or
headphones.

------
ipunchghosts
This will probably get buried but does anyone remember having to flip the tape
over and the experience associated with the album in doing that? For example,
on Metallica's Black Album, it ends on the first side Don't tread on me and
then starts on the second side wtih Through the Never. If you dont know about
the tape flip, you dont appreciate the beggining of "through the never" IMHO.

~~~
Grimm665
The vinyl flip required for Dark Side of the Moon really highlights the fact
that the album is kind of split in half. Tracks on the first half smoothly
transition to each other, but then have a hard stop before Money on side B.
It's a really interesting case of music being composed for the medium.

I found a similar example in digital media only once so far, Pretty Lights
Glowing in the Darkest Night. The first half of the EP sounds very distinct
from the second, almost as if there is an invisible vinyl flip in the middle.

------
zeristor
What is the current state of the art for music?

DVD-Audio was barely a thing ten or so years ago. After buying a B&W Zeppelin
Air I was signed me up for their Society of Sound with very high quality 5Gb
audio files for an album. My Zeppelin has since died. Is audio quality still
improving binaural tracks?

The only time I’ve been really aware of audio quality was playing a Blu-Ray of
an episode of Madmen.

~~~
opencl
Everything since CD audio has been either the same quality or worse.
Increasing the sampling rate does nothing but encode ultrasonics which are at
best inaudible and at worst introduce additional harmonic distortion into the
audible frequencies. 16 bit samples with dithering are well beyond the dynamic
range limits of human hearing.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
SACD and DVD-A have more than two channels (or 4 if you could get a hold of a
quad CD)

~~~
opencl
Well yes, but the person I replied to was specifically asking about 2 channel
audio.

------
murat124
Also this is how we saved batteries:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So)

~~~
johnpowell
In high school I worked for Kodak in photo lab doing the processing for all
the overnight photos in Oregon and Washington. The nice thing is all
disposable cameras had AA batteries in them and we filled up a few 50 gallon
garbage cans of disposable cameras a night.

On my breaks I would just sit there ripping the batteries out of the cameras
for Walkman batteries for my friends and I. I accidentally touched the
capacitor for the flash once when taking out the batteries. Only made that
mistake once.

------
_pmf_
Retrospectively, I'm very impressed by the mechanical quality. I remember the
compartment latch failing on some (non-Sony devices), but never the actual
core drive, an this is with thousands of hours of usage.

~~~
King-Aaron
The engineering inside a cassette player (both audio cassettes and video)
always intrigued me. There's so much design and manufacturing involved for
something that eventually scaled to meet a $50 price point. When I was younger
I couldn't fathom how companies could afford to do it.

------
Quequau
Man the early Walkman was a magical device. I got a latter one and mine was
barely larger than an audio cassette case.

The only access to music I had was from a friend whose older brother copied a
seemingly random collection for us to have. Vangelis, The Violent Femmes, The
Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Warren Zevon. I think I listened to the same eight
cassettes for most of the following year.

------
criddell
When I was in a record store a couple of months ago, three things occurred to
me.

The resurrection of vinyl and the health of that market makes sense to me.

The death spiral of the CD worries me (my preferred format).

The fact that people are still buying cassettes mystifies me. Poor sound
quality, low res art, serial access only, and quick degradation?

~~~
KozmoNau7
The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology
that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits. The format
also has a lot of drawbacks. The records are large and fragile, turntables are
relatively large and the whole setup is not very portable. Records are also
very much read-only.

The compact cassette is small and rugged, tape players can be small enough
that they are barely larger than a cassette tape, and most importantly it's
trivially easy to record your own tapes, either as a mix tape from other
sources, as a recording from radio or even with your friends in your small-
time garage band. There is a damn good reason why the humble cassette tape
stuck around in punk/DIY underground circles. For decades, recording to
cassette tape and having them duplicated was the absolute cheapest way to get
your music out to the world.

My own appreciation for cassette tape comes from growing up in the late
80s/early 90s. I didn't have a CD player of my own, but I had a cheap boombox
with a tape deck, and a whole bunch of tapes from my parents. Classics like
Deep Purple and the Beatles, but also a whole bunch of stuff they'd recorded
from the radio, and various other random things, I had a whole bunch of
children's books on tape, as well. My parents eventually gave me a tape deck
with a built-in microphone and a bunch of blank tapes, and let my friends and
me play around with it.

To me, the cassette tape (and the 3.5" floppy disk) was a cornerstone of my
formative years, and I will always appreciate the versatility and
possibilities the format has.

Vinyl is/was mostly a format for people with disposable income, it's the Big
Serious format. In contrast, cassette tape was _the_ format for the common
people, you can play around with it and experiment.

As for the CD, it's just an obsolete physical format for digital audio, which
is much easier to distribute online now, rather than stamping and shipping
shiny plastic discs. There are quite a few distributers that offer CD-quality
downloads.

~~~
criddell
> The vinyl resurrection is mostly due to hipster cred, and a whole mythology
> that has sprung up around the (imagined) sound quality benefits.

I think that was the start of it, but at this point it's spread well beyond
hipsters. One of my kids bought a turntable and they do the same thing I did
when I listened to records 30 years ago - lie on the floor and examine the
sleeve and liner.

Aside from the large format artwork, I wouldn't underestimate the appeal of
building and having a collection. People collect vinyl toys to sit on a shelf.
Is collecting records all that different?

> There are quite a few distributers that offer CD-quality downloads.

Not really and the ones that exist are expensive and have poor selection.

~~~
thirdsun
> Not really and the ones that exist are expensive and have poor selection.

\- Bandcamp

\- Boomkat

\- Qobuz

\- 7Digital

\- Bleep

\- Juno Download

I buy everything I like (and it's a lot) in a lossless, digital format and the
only time I can't find a legal lossless purchase option is when it's actually
a physical-only release.

~~~
criddell
I just looked on those services for a few CD's I recently bought and Qobuz is
the only one that had them. The price for a download from them is more than
the price to get Amazon to deliver the physical discs to my door. For now,
that doesn't make any sense to me especially since I actually want the
physical media. It's what I listen to as I work. If I only wanted the files,
then I would be on board.

~~~
thirdsun
Ok, I understand. For me it's different - if I have to get the CD (for example
if it's a rare, old release - Japan has lots of rare stuff from the 80s on
CDs) I only rip it and put it back on the shelf forever. I have no interest in
the physical medium.

Admittedly, and somewhat ironically, it's only the most popular mainstream
music that seems to be lacking digital lossless purchasing options. Even
mainstream music like the stuff that gets featured on Pitchfork seems to be
widely available these days.

However when you mention CD prices, you're talking about new/mint offers from
Amazon, right? Comparing second-hand prices wouldn't be fair. Since I was
surprised about your discovery I just took a recent rather popular, mainstream
and widely available album like Cate Le Bon's "Reward" to compare prices. CD
was the worst offer at € 16,40:

\- Amazon (CD): EUR 16,40

\- Qobuz: EUR 15,99

\- Boomkat: GBP 7,99

\- Bandcamp: USD 9,99

Also, never buy the premium quality at Qobuz. Their standard quality already
is lossless 16 Bit / 44,1 KHz (CD quality).

------
gumby
Though I remember its introduction well, what struck me was _how much copy_
there was in that ad.

I think of textful ads as having faded out in the 60s (just look at the long
essays that were ads from the 40s or 20s!) but really: would you read an ad in
a magazine with that wall of text?

------
khazhou
I feel it's time for boomboxes to come back. Not purple medicine-pill
bluetooth players, but big ol' boxes you can put on your shoulder and Fight
the Power with 8" speakers. There was a whole movement around playing music
_out_ , now we just inject it into our ear canals.

Nostalgia... or genius?

~~~
KineticLensman
Personally I'm happy for it to remain as nostalgia.

I was at a campsite recently and the people in the tent next door had a
playlist that was execrable. They weren't actually too loud and they adhered
to the site's night-time noise cut-off rule, but their choice of music -
massively different from mine - really degraded the pleasure of the camping
experience that evening.

YMMV.

[Edit] Also, I am perhaps biased here because I am moderately deaf, and thus
sensitized to noise pollution. Music makes it very hard to follow
conversations, even with my hearing aids. This wasn't actually a problem at
the campsite, but is a total conversation killer in enclosed spaces with hard
surfaces (like many restaurants).

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pjmlp
Now I feel old, remembering when they came into the scene.

Never got to own one though, just clones.

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ScottBurson
I have a D6C Walkman Pro -- bought in, I think, 1990 -- that still works (or
did last I tried it, anyway, maybe a couple of years ago). Great little deck;
with metal tape and Dolby C, did a fine job recording CDs.

~~~
cannam
I have one too, and I agree it's an amazing device, but a while ago I
discovered it had seized up and stopped working - the fast-forward and rewind
had been dodgy for a while, but both of them had finally given up, and
playback had also failed.

I replaced the belts, which got playback working again (see picture here
[https://twitter.com/chris_cannam/status/1043961675114840070](https://twitter.com/chris_cannam/status/1043961675114840070))
but ffwd/rwd appeared to be victims of a seized pivot which I couldn't get
moving. So it plays beautifully once more, but still can't wind.

Might be worth checking that yours is still going ok, in case lack of use is a
factor.

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totaldude87
The problem with pioneers is that , they rarely move to next level, may be due
to the thinking that "whatever" they have today just rocks and will "probably"
rock tomorrow.

Few Examples :

Nokia missing the Android boat - thinking Symbian was great Windows missing
the Mobile operating system boat - thinking Windows Phone OS was great Sony
missing the iPod boat - thinking , hey we got Walkman , what else you need.

And the list goes on. A truly remarkable product always sees the end , if the
visionaries are not ready to foresee whats next.

~~~
AstralStorm
Apple with the end of the Mac and iPhone is next? ;)

(What's ahead is not quite predictable. It might be VR, BCI or something
entirely different from either.)

~~~
totaldude87
If they keep ignoring that usability trumps over thinness , then yeah, they
could be next.

------
Timothycquinn
I recall my brother coming back from a trip to Japan with a top end Walkman in
the early 90's. It was seemed to be all metal and so small. Was a mechanical
work of art.

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bluedino
Sony always seemed to be the premium or status brand when it came to consumer
electronics, everything from portable music players to televisions and VCR's.

They always had competition from brands like Sharp, Pioneer, RCA, Magnavox,
but I think the big hit came when the really cheap brands started to flood the
market. Sony had the Discman come down to $99 for $349, but buyers were still
going for the $39 units from Craig, Koss, Sanyo and such.

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superasn
The amount of innovation that has happened in the space in 40 years is just
amazing to me.

From having to carry around boxes of cassette tapes that now fit in a small
2mm chip, to the wireless headphones with individual Bluetooth pairing that
can recognize speech, to the live streaming of not just songs but music videos
while on a moving train, makes me wonder how far we've progressed in such
little time.

------
crikli
> There were ways to bring music with you — on transistor radios, on boom
> boxes, on car stereos — but they forced you to subject everyone around you
> to that music, as well.

...and thanks to the Bluetooth speaker that era is back. Can't tell you how
often I'm hiking or running in the mountains and some group's dreadful taste
in music precedes them by a half mile.

------
atoav
And I still have one that works. Big fat latching switches that you can
activate blindly in the pocket of your jacket, a output that can actually
drive headphones properly, ...

Sometimes I have the feeling we didn’t really move forwards in terms of
interface design.

------
janwijbrand
There're many songs I still listen to, that I listened on my walkman-clone. In
most of them I can still "hear" the moment where the cassette stopped and I
had to turn it around for the remainder of the song.

------
rob74
disclaimer: listening to music using headphones while bike riding, roller-
skating or skiing is now strongly discouraged (still acceptable while taking a
walk or unglamorously using public transportation however).

~~~
bagels
By who, for what reason?

~~~
rob74
By the authorities, for the reason of your own physical well-being. In some
places, it's even illegal: [https://www.quora.com/In-California-is-it-illegal-
to-ride-a-...](https://www.quora.com/In-California-is-it-illegal-to-ride-a-
bike-with-headphones-on)

------
dr_dshiv
I loved the RadioShack tape recorder. I used it as a little portable boombox
that could play in my backpack and create a little sound bubble that would
accompany me and my friends.

------
ngcc_hk
Wow. That is really a major milestone. It change the scene. And also our view
on Japanese hardware innovate culture (seems not software sadly). I love mini-
disc more though.

------
Dowwie
My first cassette for my first Walkman was "License to Ill". That remained my
favorite tape of all time. The Walkman was flawless, too.

------
xeromal
Any idea what the hotline feature was like?

~~~
piqufoh
I was wondering this too - google found this

> a "hotline" button which activated a small built-in microphone, partially
> overriding the sound from the cassette, and allowing one user to talk to the
> other over the music.

and as the other poster remarks

> When the follow-up model, "Walkman II" came out, the "hotline" button was
> phased out.

Was there ever an _actual_ use case for this, or is it pure gimmick?

~~~
timcederman
Pure gimmick. My Bose QC-20s have this feature and every time I've tried to
use it, it's been useless.

~~~
mclehman
The Sony WH-1000XM series (possibly the next segment down as well?) still has
this feature and I've found it good enough to be useful.

On planes it's simpler than pausing/removing the headphones to order a drink
and the same in the office when you just need a quick yes/no from someone next
to you.

There's also a passive mode I use when I'm actually outside with the
headphones on. You don't hear engine noise or planes overhead but you can
still hear tire noise of nearby cars so you don't get run over. If it's quiet
you even hear footsteps.

------
wazoox
My colleague has one TPS-L2 on his desk... I have an Atari 2600 game cartridge
on mine :)

