It has been 30 years since the birth of a portable media icon – the Sony Walkman. In July 1st of 1979, the TPS-L2 model, popularly known as the blue-silver Walkman model, hit the stores in Japan, and the rest is history.
Walkman is an enduring brand, even with fierce competition with another digital media device, you don’t have to mention the name, but you can call it iPod. Yet, PC World calls it one of the 50 Greatest Gadgets of the last half century. Surprisingly, Walkman’s impact in sales and on pop culture, cannot be even be rivaled by that of iPod, even if the Apple product existed long before.
The Walkman is a promising device and those who grow up with it, including me, couldn’t imagine a daily trip on the subway without it. Yet, it has to withstand a number of competition. And mightily, it graced though quite a number of upgrades in the last 30 years, embracing new formats such as CD, mini-disc, and then the digital audio.
It’s most trying moment, was its shift to the digital format. When MP3 was just starting to change the way we listen to music, Sony already had the NetMD Or NetworkMD. It’s flagship model — MZ-N10 allows users to convert music files (including mp3) from PC to Walkman. But it still uses the mini-disc as a storage medium, therefore, didn’t really directly play mp3 files.
Come 2003, Sony released NW-MS70D, the same year Apple hit sales blockbluster with the iPod. The market gave less favor to the NW-MS70D due to its incompatability to play the MP3 format. Aside from that, it came with a hefty price tag and limited storage.
Learning from experience, Sony, later on, embraced a hard drive storage, improved software and allowed direct mp3 playback. And Walkman was back in the business.
What’s the moral lesson here for the radio industry, ADAPT! Radio needs to listen to what the listeners need.
Thirty years ago this week Sony kicked off a revolution in the consumer electronics market with the introduction of the Walkman. See how the portable audio market has changed since then.
