RIP Sony Cassette Walkman: 1979-2010

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The first Sony Walkman, the catchily-titled TPS-L2

25 October 2010

Sony's cassette Walkman is dead. Long live the Walkman.

It may have been forgotten in this age of 160GB iPods and cloud-based streaming, but the original cassette Walkman is no more, with Sony announcing last Friday it had finally ceased production 31 years after it first hit the market.

The very first Walkman, the TPS-L2, was released in Japan on July 1, 1979. As the world’s first low-cost portable music player, it revolutionised how people listened to music and became synonymous with portable music itself.

Since then, Sony estimate they've sold over 200 million cassette Walkmans (or 0GB iPods, as Blender magazine once called them).

Interestingly, Sony’s announcement came one day before the ninth birthday of another musical innovation, Apple’s iPod.

The Walkman brand lives on with Sony’s range of portable CD players and as part of their Sony Ericcson mobile phones.

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