How did the Walkman take music out of the living room?
A Sony co-founder wanted a cassette player small enough to listen to while travelling, and the first Walkman sold six times faster than Sony had predicted.
โถ Start the storyThe Walkman took music out of the living room by making a cassette player small enough to carry and a pair of headphones private enough to wear. It is a brand of portable audio players made by Sony since 1979, first as a portable cassette player. Its origin was a business traveller's wish: Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka used a bulky cassette recorder to listen to music while travelling, and asked Norio Ohga to design a playback-only version optimised for walking.
The result, the TPS-L2, went on sale in Japan on 1 July 1979 for around $150, and it was the world's first low-cost . Sony predicted it would sell about 5,000 a month, but it sold more than 30,000 in the first two months. Akio Morita positioned it in the youth market, emphasising youth, vitality and fashion. Time magazine later said its combination of portability, since it ran on two AA batteries, and privacy, since it had a headphone jack but no external speaker, made it ideal for people who wanted a portable to take anywhere.
30,000+
Outside Japan the name caused trouble. Overseas sales companies objected to it, so the player was sold as Sound-about in the United States, Freestyle in Australia and Sweden, and Stowaway in the UK. In the end the name Walkman was used worldwide, and Sony sold approximately 220 million cassette-based Walkman units before ending production in 2010.
Headphones began to be worn in public. That caused safety controversies in the US, and in 1982 the mayor of Woodbridge, New Jersey banned wearing a Walkman in public because of pedestrian accidents.
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Recap
The Walkman put music in your pocket and in your ears, so listening became personal and mobile.
๐ก A trick to remember it ยท Walk + man: picture a man walking down the street with the living-room stereo shrunk into his ears.
Surprising fact ยท Sony expected to sell about 5,000 a month, but sold more than 30,000 in the first two months.
Connects to
- ๐ง How can an MP3 throw away most of a song and still sound the same?
- ๐ผ How did a German tape recorder and Bing Crosby change how music is made?
- ๐ Why does a CD sample sound 44,100 times a second, and how does a laser read it?
- ๐ฌ Who really invented the transistor, and who was left off the patent?
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.