Traveling Music: The Walkman Turns 30
by Mark Anthony Neal
The Sony Walkman turns 30 years-old this month and though it’s no longer on the cutting edge of music listening technology, the revolution it wrought in listening habits continues to have major ramifications, including recent debates about the so-called “death” of Black Radio.
When the SONY Walkman first debuted in 1979, some critics weren’t quite sure how to describe the music player. In their 1980 review of the Walkman, the New York Times highlights the Walkman’s utility for joggers: “The Sony Walkman is a lightweight portable cassette player with headphones that adds a new dimension to jogging. It allows the runner to listen to music, or other taped recordings, without disturbing other joggers.” Clearly they w ere unprepared for the Walkman’s popularity; SONY would sell 50 million Walkman in the first decade of its availability.
The success of the Walkman was tied to an age old human concern—how to take your music with you. Indeed the issue of portability is what fueled innovation throughout the 20th century in relationship popular music listening habits. When the first commercial radio stations began to appear in the United States in the early 1920s, the radio became a integral part of family oriented entertainment, developing hand-in-hand with the development of phonographs and the recording industry. When television began to get a foothold in American households in the late 1940s, it represented a real challenge to radio. The radio industry responded with the development of the first generation of transistor radios in the 1950s. At the time, radios were often bulky space devouring contraptions—not unlike early televisions. What the transistor radio—or pocket radio—represented was a technology whose primary feature was its portability. Not surprisingly the first product that SONY introduced to the United States was a pocket transistor radio.
The explosion of the popular music industry in the mid-1950s with the so-called birth of “Rock ‘n Roll” is virtually unimaginable without the emergence of the transistor radio and the introduction of car radios as standard in American automobiles. Both addressed issues of portability—listening to the sounds of the Flamingos on a starry night—and privacy, as American youth could listen—eavesdrop really—to the burgeoning sounds of Rhythm and Blues and Soul emanating from Black America, without the close scrutiny of parents and other adults. As Motown founder Berry Gordy has remarked on numerous occasions, the production quality of Motown recordings in the 1960s was pitched to how the music might sound on a car or transistor radio.
By the time the SONY Walkman appears in 1979, the issue of portability and personal choice had pushed the development of various musical media, as the phonograph presented obvious limitations. The 8-Track cartridge was but one attempt to address the need for, not only portability, but to increase the amount of music available in one sitting. Even LPs—long playing albums—had to be turned over at some point. The 8-Track gained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s because it could play in an endless loop. When the technology proved unreliable—there’s many a story about the 8-Track Player that ate your favorite 8-Track cartridge—the compact cassette emerged as the media of choice.
The major appeal of the compact cassette was the ability for users to dub recordings from their own collection creating the first generation of home mix tapes of both recorded music and dubs of on-air radio broadcasts. For example, one of the narratives that explains the growing popularity of rap music in the 1980s was the transport of rap broadcasts from major metropolises to small town America, particularly college towns, via dub recordings on compact cassettes. By the end of the 1980s the cassette had emerged as one of the most popular forms of pre-recorded music and the popularity of the SONY Walkman—and its many derivatives including the Discman, SONY’s first portable compact disc player—was largely the reason for it.
With the introduction of MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology (MP3) in the 1990s, and the iPod brand of portable players emerging as the most popular choice, with over 200 million sold since its introduction in 2001, the Walkman has become a relic . But the issue of portability that the Walkman helped to initially solve still has important ramifications as the popularity of MP3 players has challenged the once dominant role of radio as a primary delivery system of music. With individual music lovers literally walking around with a personal archive many have turned off the radio. For parents driving during afternoon drive time in a mini-van full of kids, the “Kiddie” playlist on an MP3 player is a safer option than submitting yourself to the always shifting standards of the local “urban” radio station.
As the issue of portability will always remain, there’s little doubt that we’ll be memorializing the iPod, much the way we pay tribute to the Walkman today.
by Mark Anthony Neal
The Sony Walkman turns 30 years-old this month and though it’s no longer on the cutting edge of music listening technology, the revolution it wrought in listening habits continues to have major ramifications, including recent debates about the so-called “death” of Black Radio.
When the SONY Walkman first debuted in 1979, some critics weren’t quite sure how to describe the music player. In their 1980 review of the Walkman, the New York Times highlights the Walkman’s utility for joggers: “The Sony Walkman is a lightweight portable cassette player with headphones that adds a new dimension to jogging. It allows the runner to listen to music, or other taped recordings, without disturbing other joggers.” Clearly they w ere unprepared for the Walkman’s popularity; SONY would sell 50 million Walkman in the first decade of its availability.
The success of the Walkman was tied to an age old human concern—how to take your music with you. Indeed the issue of portability is what fueled innovation throughout the 20th century in relationship popular music listening habits. When the first commercial radio stations began to appear in the United States in the early 1920s, the radio became a integral part of family oriented entertainment, developing hand-in-hand with the development of phonographs and the recording industry. When television began to get a foothold in American households in the late 1940s, it represented a real challenge to radio. The radio industry responded with the development of the first generation of transistor radios in the 1950s. At the time, radios were often bulky space devouring contraptions—not unlike early televisions. What the transistor radio—or pocket radio—represented was a technology whose primary feature was its portability. Not surprisingly the first product that SONY introduced to the United States was a pocket transistor radio.
The explosion of the popular music industry in the mid-1950s with the so-called birth of “Rock ‘n Roll” is virtually unimaginable without the emergence of the transistor radio and the introduction of car radios as standard in American automobiles. Both addressed issues of portability—listening to the sounds of the Flamingos on a starry night—and privacy, as American youth could listen—eavesdrop really—to the burgeoning sounds of Rhythm and Blues and Soul emanating from Black America, without the close scrutiny of parents and other adults. As Motown founder Berry Gordy has remarked on numerous occasions, the production quality of Motown recordings in the 1960s was pitched to how the music might sound on a car or transistor radio.
By the time the SONY Walkman appears in 1979, the issue of portability and personal choice had pushed the development of various musical media, as the phonograph presented obvious limitations. The 8-Track cartridge was but one attempt to address the need for, not only portability, but to increase the amount of music available in one sitting. Even LPs—long playing albums—had to be turned over at some point. The 8-Track gained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s because it could play in an endless loop. When the technology proved unreliable—there’s many a story about the 8-Track Player that ate your favorite 8-Track cartridge—the compact cassette emerged as the media of choice.
The major appeal of the compact cassette was the ability for users to dub recordings from their own collection creating the first generation of home mix tapes of both recorded music and dubs of on-air radio broadcasts. For example, one of the narratives that explains the growing popularity of rap music in the 1980s was the transport of rap broadcasts from major metropolises to small town America, particularly college towns, via dub recordings on compact cassettes. By the end of the 1980s the cassette had emerged as one of the most popular forms of pre-recorded music and the popularity of the SONY Walkman—and its many derivatives including the Discman, SONY’s first portable compact disc player—was largely the reason for it.
With the introduction of MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology (MP3) in the 1990s, and the iPod brand of portable players emerging as the most popular choice, with over 200 million sold since its introduction in 2001, the Walkman has become a relic . But the issue of portability that the Walkman helped to initially solve still has important ramifications as the popularity of MP3 players has challenged the once dominant role of radio as a primary delivery system of music. With individual music lovers literally walking around with a personal archive many have turned off the radio. For parents driving during afternoon drive time in a mini-van full of kids, the “Kiddie” playlist on an MP3 player is a safer option than submitting yourself to the always shifting standards of the local “urban” radio station.
As the issue of portability will always remain, there’s little doubt that we’ll be memorializing the iPod, much the way we pay tribute to the Walkman today.
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