July 14, 2022 – Walkman

Happy Throwback Thursday! Today we’re spotlighting the year 1979 – that’s the year the Sony Walkman was first introduced! It was the world’s first low-cost personal stereo, and it revolutionized the way people listened to music.
In February 1979, Sony’s cofounder asked executives to come up with an easy to carry device so he could listen to his favorite opera cassettes on long international flights. They adapted one of their current products, a Pressman recording device for journalists, to create the Walkman. The company hoped that this product would make up for the epic failure of Betamax, which they had introduced in the early 70s. Betamax lost out big time to VHS tapes, which was a humiliating blow. Sony’s chairman got a Walkman prototype in the spring of 1979, and was so impressed with it that they rushed it into production for a launch that summer.
The Walkman went on sale in Japan in July 1979, costing $150. The company predicted it would sell 5,000 Walkman’s a month, but in the first 2 months, it sold more than 30,000. The Walkman was introduced in the U.S. in June 1980.
The Walkman quickly became an icon. Because of its huge success, cassettes outsold vinyl records for the first time in 1983. Millions of people used Walkman’s while exercising. In fact, during the height of its popularity, there was a 30% increase in the number of people who said they walked for exercise.
20 years after the launch of the first model, more than 186 million Walkman’s had been sold worldwide. The popularity of portable CD players led the decline of the cassette Walkman, and production stopped in 2010. Learn more here.