These days, portable music is
something humanity takes for granted. There are songs and playlists readily and
literally on hand with smartphones and tablets, boasting library capabilities
that would enable them to play hours of music on end. It could be said that the
routine mundaneness of portable listening to sheer quantities of music can be
credited to Apple and Steve Jobs, showing the possibility with the digital-format
iPod media player. But they are not the absolute pioneers of music on the go.
It is not Apple but rather Sony, back in the age of magnetic-tape cassettes,
when they released the Walkman four decades ago.
The first Sony Walkman portable
music cassette player was released back in July 1, 1979. And 40 years to the
day, Sony is celebrating the line of little devices that have given them an
indelible mark on the pop culture of a past generation, even if they have been
superseded by another company’s technological advances. This Monday Sony Corp.
in Japan kicked off a two-month long milestone celebration according to Japan Times, to
commemorate the Walkman in a wide variety of exhibits showcasing the history
and development of portable music.
On the pre-opening press event, President
Daisuke Nagano of the subsidiary Sony Enterprise Co. pretty much laid down how
the Walkman celebration will fell like for visitors. "I want people to
enjoy the Walkman as they immerse themselves in nostalgia," he said. To
that effect, there are plenty of Walkman-themed attractions set up at the Sony
Ginza Park in Tokyo, former site of the old Sony HQ that was demolished back in
2017. They include a giant model of the 1983 waterproof Walkman standing 2.5
meters tall, a Walkman Wall displaying the 237 different models of Walkman
cassette players and its direct successor the Discman CD players, and much
more.
The “My Story, My Walkman”
exhibit has 40 Walkman players on display that contains reminiscences and
favorite music from a variety of celebrities, creators and public figures, all
for each year since Sony debuted the first Walkman. Artists also get their
niche by featuring original skins for the Walkman series in the “Custom Walkman”
attraction. These are but the tip of the iceberg in the nostalgia blitz for the
Sony Walkman, which eventually sold over 400 million units worldwide. That is
not bad for a past time when privately listening to music while one walked was
still a novel idea.
While its original music cassette
format is now obsolete for all intents and purposes, Sony retains trademark for
the Walkman name, using it for any of their portable audio devices the way
Apple puts the little “i” on their own.
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