The Sony Walkman was the first mode of listening to music privately and on the go. The Walkman was a portable cassette player that allowed people to listen wherever they went, as it was compactable and easy to bring along anywhere.While the Sony Walkman was discontinued in 2010, its influence still lives on today and will always be remembered as what sparked the idea of taking music everywhere, and people transforming from “listeners into users” (Hayden).
This device was small and convenient. It was about 14 ounces and just bigger than a cassette itself. It was blue and silver, had big buttons and ran on AA batteries. It required big headphones, and had spotty volume which required people to blare their music, often having the sounds escape so that the public could hear it as well. It failed to produce the same sound than the record players could at home (History.com Editors). It had two earphone jacks so that people could listen at the same time, however it isolated people in that they were listening alone. It created an idea of privacy that music hadn’t presented prior to the release of the Walkman. While the actual engineering of the device was not a great breakthrough as magnetic cassette technology had been around for about sixteen years, this new way of listening changed the way people encountered music and changed an aspect of entertainment(Meaghan). It’s been said that the invention of the Walkman wasn’t what was so astonishing, but rather the “breakthrough in imagination” (History.com Editors).
The Walkman was released to the public in the summer of 1979 and sold for $150, which would be around $535 today. The target audience for this product was young people, and was first released in Japan during the summer when students were just finished with the school year. It was released in America right during the aerobics craze, which is perhaps why it was so successful. People now exercised listening to their own music on the go, which promoted the Walkman as well as exercise itself. It made working out more enjoyable and more popular. Over 400 million units were sold in its time on shelves(Franzen). Cassette tapes eventually outsold vinyl records for the first time in 1983 (Meaghan).
The way people listened to music was changed forever with the release of the Walkman. Huge bulky boomboxes and stereos were no longer needed to be lugged around. It also was compact and relatively inexpensive so their target audience was music lovers from a wide variety of different people from different places and ages. One of the major changes that the Walkman inflicted on the world was allowing a public place to become private, as one put in their headphones and zoned out their surroundings no matter where they were. A study that asked college students at the time about the effects of the Walkman found that it allowed for a “customized story and soundtrack” and that bringing privacy to public places was considered, “empowering” or “liberating”(Chen). This study also said that students expressed that the Walkman doesn’t give specific feelings or emotions directly to the listener, but helps the listener “express and enhance an existing emotional state”(Chen). It allowed people to listen to the music they wanted to listen to, when they wanted to listen to it, and allowed them to focus on their thoughts and emotions privately. Other students from this study said that, “The Walkman has turned music listening to a nomadic experience.” The Walkman even influenced the language that people used to communicate with one another as measures of time previously referred to as an “hour” or a “minute,” turned to a “song” or “tape”(Chen). Students also reported that when using the Walkman they found that it was very easy to become disconnected and distant from their friends and the rest of the world. Perhaps the Walkman was one of the first devices that started this issue of “too much screen time.”
With new technology, however, the Walkman dissolved. Sony stopped producing the device in 2010. The compact discs started to become popular and more efficient in 1982 and people started using the 8-track. Even more so when Apple’s iPod came out in 2001, Walkman sales seriously declined. It is clear today that kids would be completely weirded out by the way their parents first listened to music on the go, as evident in this video titled, “Kids React to Walksmans.” While today’s generation may think of the Walkman as a piece of technology that was around with the dinosaurs, it had a huge impact and influence on the music listening apps on their phones that they use ad nauseam. However, the Walkman instilled the idea and imagination that created the more modern ways of privately listening to music on the go, and Sony has even created a Sony Walkman app that allows present day listeners to have a connection to the past.
Work Cited
Chen, S.S. Electronic Narcissism: College Students’ Experiences of Walkman Listening. Qualitative Sociology 21, 255–276 (1998). https://doi-org.ezproxy.wlu.edu/10.1023/A:1022142519564
→ This source was a study conducted on college students about their experiences and perspectives of using and listening to a Walkman as their mode of experiencing music. This source was really helpful because it allows us, a generation that wasn’t exposed to life before the Walkman, to show how this piece of technology transformed how they listen to music and how it affected other aspects of life.
Gebel, Meira. “The Walkman Just Turned 40 - Here’s How Listening to Music Has Changed over the Years.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 1 July 2019, www.businessinsider.com/history-listening-to-music-recorded-walkman-2019-6.
→ This source provided the picture of the two people rollerblading or running together and listening to music together out of the same Walkman. This source shows us that while some people may think that the Walkman privatized music, that people were able to enjoy the music side by side with one another. Also the people appear to be rollerblading which shows that the walkman and the aerobic craze did coincide.
Haire, Meaghan. “The Walkman.” Time, Time Inc., 1 July 2009, content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html.
→ This source gives us some detail about the history of the Walkman and includes facts about the physical device, as well as reasons for it being so popular, including the fact that it came out right during the exercise craze in America. The information from this source is helpful to understand why the device was so desirable and why it was as successful as it was.
Hayden, Erik. “Sony’s Walkman Disappears With a Whimper.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Oct. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/sony-s-walkman-disappears-with-a-whimper/343691/.
→ This source talks about the effect of the device on the people. It explains how the Walkman made a difference in people as they became “users not listeners” and also explains how it had influence on more modern products such as the iPod.
History.com Editors. “The First Sony Walkman Goes on Sale.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 13 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-first-sony-walkman-goes-on-sale.
→ This is another source that gives background on the Walkman and its creation. I thought it was a good source as it brought up the ideas that the Walkman was really a breakthrough in imagination, but not really technology, and also that even though it was convenient it wasn’t the same quality as a record player.
Franzen, Carl. “The History of the Walkman: 35 Years of Iconic Music Players.” The Verge, The Verge, 1 July 2014, www.theverge.com/2014/7/1/5861062/sony-walkman-at-35.
→ This source talks about the history of the Walkman, as well as its eventual downfall as other technology was introduced. This source was helpful as it talked about how the Walkman influenced new ways to listen to technology and explained the transition between new models and modes of listening to music on a handheld device.
FBE. “Kids React to Walkmans (Portable Cassette Players).” Youtube, 13 April. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E
→ This was a video of kids of many different ages being shown the Walkman and being asked about it. The kids had absolutely no idea what it was and were very surprised that this device was the first model of listening to music privately on the go. I fit myself in this category, as I wouldn’t have known that the device existed if my parents hadn’t told me. It was interesting to see that this device stopped being sold just ten years ago and is already being forgotten, and it was so popular not that long ago.