Pop Culture Retrospective Episode #21 - The Sony Walkman: the history behind the portable listening device that paved the way for the Discman, the MP3 player and the infamous iPod!

Episode #21 - The Sony Walkman

Hello and thank you so very much for tuning in to the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast, a show inspired by, and in memory of, my big sister Rebecca and her love for all things pop-culture, especially the people, places and things of the 80s, 90s and early 00s. My name is Amy Lewis and I am your captain aboard this pop culture time machine. On each episode of this show we take a deep dive into the myriad of pop culture topics that my sister experienced and loved while she was growing up and during her adulthood. In many instances, these are things that I too enjoyed.  I lost my sister tragically in 2019 and wanted to do something to honor her memory, and so here we are.  I devote each episode to becoming a mini expert on whatever the pop culture topic is.  Thank you for coming along for the ride!

You are tuning in to Episode # 21 the Sony Walkman, the portable music player that laid the groundwork for the discman, the MP3 player and the infamous iPod. 1979 was an incredible year in the world of pop culture.  In July of that year for example, Disco Demolition Night happened at Comiskey Park which was where the Chicago White Sox used to play before the stadium was demolished (PS I am old enough to have seen a few games there prior to it’s demolition).  Fans went crazy that night and threw disco records by the likes of Donna Summer and Village People in the stands and onto the field, forcing the team to forfeit the game.  Sounds a bit extreme, doesn’t it? I love Donna Summer and the Village People, no joke so this story really hurts.  I keep singing the lyrics to the song “In the Navy” by the Village People around my kids and my oldest son keeps asking, “what’s the navy?” I personally cannot handle country music whatsoever so I just don’t listen to it….go figure.  Also in 1979, Michael Jackson released one of his masterpieces with “Off the Wall”, ESPN launched and for about $550 you could purchase an Atari 400 Home Computer.  And finally, only July 1, 1979 Sony launched the Walkman - the compact and personal listening device that would change how the world listened to music, possibly forever.  

So grab your roller-skates (don’t bother with a helmet, it’s the 70s, your skull will be just fine, walk it off, walk it off), your sweatbands and your tiny athletic shorts, here we go!

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Believe it or not, the concept, development and subsequent release of the Sony Walkman started with, well, Opera of all things.  A Sony executive by the name of Masura Ibuka traveled a lot for his job and he often listened to music as he traveled.  He often dragged a large cassette recorder around with him, but it was bulky, heavy and I imagine, distracting to other people. In 1978, he asked Norio Ohga, then Executive Deputy president, to design a compact, playback-only stereo version of the large tape recorders that newspaper and radio reporters used. In fact, in 1977, Sony released a recorder aimed at reporters called the Pressman.  Genius name.  He also thought it would be incredibly practical and distinctive if the player had headphones.  

Ibuka thought that having something you could listen to while walking around would be of interest to people.  And as we all know now, he was absolutely right.  God Japanese people are smart.  And I say that because I am Japanese.  I know it’s obvious by the sound of my voice.  But seriously though, I am part Japanese.   My Grandmother, who we have always called Obachan, is from there.

In 1978, Sony started to develop the design of the Walkman.  They took apart previous recorders like the Pressman, removed the parts that were not necessary for a personal listening experience and kept what they did need.

The Walkman was first released in Japan on July 1, 1979, Sony expected to sell maybe 5,000 units per month, but they ended up selling 50,000 in the first 2 months.  It cost about $200 at the time ($700 in today’s money) to purchase a walkman, so certainly not inexpensive.  The Walkman really appealed to Japanese consumers because for many of those who lived in big cities like Tokyo, the hustle and bustle of the city could often be overwhelming.  The Japanese sort of yearned for their own personal space and the Walkman afforded them this opportunity.  The Walkman wasn’t Sony’s first foray into making compact music players though. In 1955 they introduced their first transistor radio.  They had also previously released the pocket radio, which could clip into a shirt pocket.    When it was first introduced in the United States, the Walkman was called the Sound About.  In the UK, it was called the Stowaway.  In Sweden it was called the Freestyle.  Sony realized that having different names for different counties was not a great idea, so to keep things consistent (and less confusing) they decided on the Walkman for the standard name.  

The first edition of the Walkman was called the TPS-L2.  It was sort of slate blue and gray and came with a leather snap case with a strap to help protect and carry it.  It required 2 double A batteries to operate.  It featured easy to find and push buttons to control the music as well as headphones. The headphones were truly state of the art for their time. They were lightweight and comfortable to wear which was completely different from your typical headphones which were large and often uncomfortable to wear. It also featured, get this, 2 headphone jacks.  That’s right.  You and your friends could listen to the latest album from Sister Sledge, The Pretenders, Rick James or Prince at the same time.  And if that wasn’t amazing ENOUGH, the Walkman also had a feature called a “hot line.” If you were listening to music with another person with each person wearing their own headphones, by pressing an orange button and speaking into the built in microphone, you could talk to them and they would hear you through their headphones.  Because, you know, giving them a nudge and gesturing for them to take their headphones off so you could chat was just wayyyy too difficult. Who has the time for that?  It was pretty cool though because the volume of the music would go down on the headphones so you could hear better. I wonder how many couples made fun of strangers on the subway or on airplanes together ulitizing this feature. What Jerks.  As part of their elaborate advertising, Sony actually paid people and couples to wear the Walkman in public.  

Despite the initial success in Japan, it took some time for consumers in other countries, especially the United States, to wrap their heads around the concept of a small, personal, listening device.  After all, in the late 70s and 80s, having a large boom box was a sign of how cool you were.  The bigger the boom box, the cooler you were.  Music was an incredibly social endeavor- when music was blasted in a park, friends would dance around.  In addition, going out dancing was incredibly popular, all over the world.  Music and being social was truly universal. The sound from boom boxes, however, often irritated the people who were not listening, but still, a device with headphones was seen as being anti-social.  If only they could take a time machine to the future to see how much cell phones would make us anti-social, but I digress.  In one town, I believe it was in New Jersey, the Sony Walkman was banned from being used while people were walking, perhaps across a crosswalk or riding their bikes as officials felt there was danger of people getting hit by cars while being distracted by their walkmans.  I wonder if someone were to travel back in time instead this time and tell those same officials that 40 years from now people will die taking pictures of themselves while in scenic locations and while chasing after cartoon characters on their phones. But I digress, yet again. 

Early advertising for the Walkman in the United States focused on showing people using the walkman during active activities such as roller skating, exercising and dancing.  In one famous commercial a young guy is walking down one side of the street and he looks sort of down and depressed.  The street is dark, almost seems like he is being filmed in black and white.  On the other side of the street, everyone is happy and is dressed in colorful clothing.  He decides to walk over there.  Someone hands him a walkman, he puts on the headphones and all of a sudden, he appears in color with a huge smile on his face.  He then walks down the sunny side of the street next to a pretty woman.  CLIP.  Later advertisements featured celebrities like Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda and Madonna.  

The Walkman was built incredibly well.  If something broke, consumers would often fix it themselves.  For example, if that band that moved the gears which rotated the tape snapped, consumers would fix it themselves.  Aesthetically it was designed well, too.  Even now, 40 years after it first came out it doesn’t look like a super dated piece of equipment.  A true testament to the strength of Sony’s engineers.  People wanted to use one of them not only because of the music, but also because it looked so cool.  

The next model of the Walkman was called the WM 2.  You could now record on it and it was even smaller than the first model and it was just a hair smaller than a cassette tape.  It was the smallest portable music player of it’s time.  It started to come in many different colors with the update like navy blue, red and silver.  

In 1983, cassettes out sold vinyl for the first time and a lot of that was thanks to the walkman.  As the popularity of the walkman exploded, so too did the popularity of aerobics.  People were using walkmans to help improve the intensity of their workouts, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t listen to music while I was working out.  For example, when I first got into biking when I was in middle school, I used to ride my bike late in the afternoon and evening and ALWAYS had a mixed-tape to listen to.  I rocked the Jamiroquai big time during those days.  

Between 1987 and 1997, at the height of Walkman’s popularity, the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%.  And during this peak period, a statue was erected in 1989 to mark the 10 year anniversary of the Sony Walkman.  It’s a large bronze-colored statue that features a person walking and listening to, well, a Walkman.  I have been unable to figure out where the statue is located, but I imagine it must be in Japan.  It’s crazy to think that about half of the people alive today who walk past that statue, will have no idea what a walkman is and/or will have never used one.

By 1992, Sony had sold 100 million units of the Walkman.  

At some point, probably in middle school, my sister got an official Walkman, that lucky duck.  I remember her being really frustrated when she was in high school because she unfortunately got a Saturday detention (just like in the Breakfast club) and she was not allowed to bring her walkman.  Her Snoop Dogg and Smashing Pumpkins tapes would just have to wait. It was funny how my sister sort of became “cool” when she was in high school, definitely a lot cooler than me that’s for sure.  However, just a few years before her taste in music changed, she was rocking out to Amy Grant tapes  Amy Grant in case you are not familiar, is a famous singer who made the successful transition from Christian music to Pop music in the early 1990s.  I’m not kidding.   

Throughout its many years of development, there were 170 different models of the Walkman.  There was even a sport model.  It was yellow with headphones that were even more compact than previous ones.  It was also more durable than previous models and could withstand more impact.  It featured an arm band and the buttons were rubber-sealed.  Other incarnations included an AM/FM radio, bass boost and one model was even solar-powered.  Subsequent models would also remove the additional headphone jack.  Sony also introduced a Walkman for young children called “My First Walkman” which I believe my cousin received one year for Christmas.  I have no idea what he was listening to, but for literally hours, he went in circles through their house singing along and shaking his head to the beat.  Each room on the main level of their house was connected by a doorway so he walked through the whole house over and over again.  There was also a Sony Super Walkman released and even a Royal Version which was encased in a velvet lined box and given to Princess Diana.  

After an impressive run for many years, the popularity of cassette tapes started to taper off (get it, tape-r off? That was bad.) and Compact Discs or CDs started to take off.  Interest in tapes and subsequently the Walkman dissipated, so Sony developed the Discman.  

I had several Discmen (is that even the right way to pluralize Discman?) anyways, I had several Discmen as I was growing up.  One of my favorite embarrassing stories is when I was in college, I was running with my Discman, which was resting on the treadmill I was using.  It fell onto the treadmill as I was running and thankfully I was able to jump over it in time without smashing it into a million pieces.  And remarkably, I didn’t fall off the treadmill either.  

That being said, it fell so hard that it was pretty loud and everyone was looking for the loud thud in the huge rec center that my college has.  

But what really put the last nail in the coffin for the Walkman was the Apple iPod which was released in 2003.  People could now carry all of their music digitally.  Instead of having a cassette tape with maybe a dozen or so songs on it, you could now carry hundreds and later, tens of thousands of songs on one.  My sister gave me my first iPod, a green one, after she got a newer one.  When I left that on an airplane, she bought me another one - this time a red one with my name and phone number engraved onto it.  When I lost that one she didn’t get me another one which is totally understandable.  I still have an old iPod shuffle that still works (battery doesn’t last as long as it used to, but still not bad).  I actually use it all of the time for yard work as it’s tiny and I hate having heavy stuff (like a cell phone) in my pockets.  However, no matter how much portable music progresses we will always need to thank Sony for their genius product which was the Walkman.  

As one Sony engineer said:  “the culture of carrying music with you started with the TPS L-2 and has continued on today.”  

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I hope you have enjoyed this look back on the Sony Walkman, one of the most successful cassette players of all time. This innovative piece of technology spawned 150 million imitations, but none was quite like the original, not even the Emerson portable cassette player that I used while on the rowing machine at my local YMCA.  I’m not kidding.  In 2009, the Walkman as we know it was discontinued, but by that time 385 million units had sold.  

Despite its unfortunate, yet predictable discontinuation, people will always be nostalgic for simpler times and in 2014, an original Sony Walkman was featured in the hit movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” and interest in the device found a resurgence.  People started to sell them on ebay which saw a huge spike for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.  You can even find them now, still going for relatively high prices. The Walkman has had impressive staying power and will be remembered for generations to come, including mine and my sister’s.  

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I hope you will join me for my next show where we will discuss one of the most popular and talented R & B singers of all time, the one and only Usher.  Until then, be kind, be safe and hold on to your memories.