- I LOVED MY WALKMAN!

Sony retires the cassette Walkman after 30 years

CNN
October 25, 2010

After retiring the floppy disk in March, Sony has halted the manufacture and distribution of another now-obsolete technology: the cassette Walkman, the first low-cost, portable music player.

The final batch was shipped to Japanese retailers in April, according to IT Media. Once these units are sold, new cassette Walkmans will no longer be available through the manufacturer.

The first generation Walkman (which was called the Soundabout in the U.S., and the Stowaway in the UK) was released on July 1, 1979 in Japan. Although it later became a huge success, it only sold 3,000 units in its first month. Sony managed to sell some 200 million iterations of the cassette Walkman over the product line's 30-year career.

Somewhat ironically, the announcement was delivered just one day ahead of the iPod's ninth anniversary on October 23, although the decline of the cassette Walkman is attributed primarily to the explosive popularity of CD players in the '90s, not the iPod

Sony retires the cassette... 30 years

I got my first Walkman in 1983.I thought it was the greatest thing in the world

aww i had one handed down to me lol i have NO clue where it is, i remember playing my boys 2 men tape walking to school.

I never cared for them anyway. If it don't shake the walls, I'm not interested.

It was just a matter of time anyway because the only cassettes still being made are the blank ones. My cassette deck on my component system died on me last year and I haven't bothered replacing it because I have a CD recorder (the kind that records just like cassette players do). I hope the companies still continue to make cassette decks for stereos though because I may eventually replace mine in the future because there's much more you can do creatively recording onto a cassette than onto a CD. With a cassette, you can either record over or edit out your mistakes when you make a mix (mix as in crossfading and blending). When it's being recorded onto CD, it's on there, mistakes and all. Plus the pause button on cassettes is great for making edits. You can always record the finished product from the cassette onto a CD once it's perfect.

SoulAlive said:

I got my first Walkman in 1983.I thought it was the greatest thing in the world

I had one around that time also but the only reason I had one is because it was so little, I could sneak it into school and then lay my head on the desk during study hall on top of the headphones. Other than that, I mainly had stereos and big huge ass boomboxes. You would look kinda silly shaking ass and no one else can hear what you're shaking ass to. What can I say? Everything I'm into is about a party, 24/7.

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[Edited 10/25/10 14:39pm]

I think I still have a cassette walkman somewhere in my closet

Never owned one. Oh well lol

SoulAlive said:

I think I still have a cassette walkman somewhere in my closet

I don't have one anymore but I still have my very first Polaroid One Step Camera. Remember, the white one with the little rainbow strip down the front and you would put a strip of five flashbulbs on top of it? I doubt they even still make film or the flashbulb strip for it anymore but I found it in a closet when I moved and kept it in case it was a collector's item or something.

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[Edited 10/25/10 14:43pm]

Well, things do last forever, years from now DVDs/Blu-ray will also cease to exist.

Great minds think alike Bulldog

Or I just didn't see your thread

[Edited 10/25/10 14:56pm]

[Edited 10/25/10 14:55pm]

HuMpThAnG said:

http://prince.org/msg/8/346042

I don't know why when I click on shit, it always goes to some archival shit from 2008 or something.

And you created yours at 2:20 pm, this was created at 1:00-something.

vainandy said:

It was just a matter of time anyway because the only cassettes still being made are the blank ones.

Malaco still makes and sells pre-recorded cassettes through mail order. My mom gets their catalogue every couple of months.

Timmy84 said:

HuMpThAnG said:

http://prince.org/msg/8/346042

I don't know why when I click on shit, it always goes to some archival shit from 2008 or something.

ok....I'm not the only one who notice that

I'm like

Timmy84 said:

And you created yours at 2:20 pm, this was created at 1:00-something.

j/k! I haven't played one in years, but might still have one somewhere. The walkman was my staple during the 80's and 90's.

I've heard cassettes have better sound than cds.

Mmmp, mmmp, MMMP! I'm gettin' old(er).

At least it lasted longer than the 8 Track!!

2freaky4church1 said:

I've heard cassettes have better sound than cds.

Cassettes deteriote everytime you replay them, so for that main reason, I gotta disagree. Now early CD's often sounding like doo doo but all in all CD's wipe the floor of cassettes. Now vinyl LOL.........

I had a cassette walkman. I hated the "ghosting" though. You know, where you would faintly hear the other side playing in reverse when there was silence. Thats due to playing the cassette too much LOL. It was freaky and mildly annoying. I remember my Michael jackson "bad" and "dangerous" cassettes doing that LOL

Portable cassette players were dead years before the Sony Walkman.

One of my all-time favorite moments was listening to Heart's Bad Animals album on cassette.

My best moments were buying blank cassettes to record my favorite tracks off the radio so I could listen to then in my Walkman. This predates "downloading" audio tracks by a decade!

Back in High School I dished out over $100 (quite a bit of money for me at the time) for the waterproof "sports" walkman...

...MAN, did I think I was the SHIT strutting around with that at the beach!

And btw Tony, I still have some of my cassettes with music that I'd recorded from the radio. One of my favorite songs of all time ("Bajio" by Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco) I first taped off the radio back in college. I spent the next decade trying to find that song on an album, with no success. When I first got internet, one of the first things that I did was log onto mymusic.com to try to buy the track (to no avail). Finally about 5 years ago I found it on Bearshare and downloaded it.

In all that while, I still had my tape.

Death of a format...always nice for a moment of nostalgia. Had to dig up MY relic from '85..kinda the Ferrari of Walkmen @ the time (still works):

[img:$uid]http://tos-k.blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_248/tos-k/AIWA_HS-J400.jpg[/img:$uid]

JamFanHot said:

Death of a format...always nice for a moment of nostalgia. Had to dig up MY relic from '85..kinda the Ferrari of Walkmen @ the time (still works):

[img:$uid]http://tos-k.blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_248/tos-k/AIWA_HS-J400.jpg[/img:$uid]

Holy crap! Whatever happened to Aiwa? I remember lusting after one of those!

TonyVanDam said:

Portable cassette players were dead years before the Sony Walkman.

One of my all-time favorite moments was listening to Heart's Bad Animals album on cassette.

My best moments were buying blank cassettes to record my favorite tracks off the radio so I could listen to then in my Walkman. This predates "downloading" audio tracks by a decade!

And the record companies were having a fit over even that back then, wanting an extra tax added on to blank tapes because they were losing money from people recording their vinyl records onto cassettes.

vainandy said:

I never cared for them anyway. If it don't shake the walls, I'm not interested.

It was just a matter of time anyway because the only cassettes still being made are the blank ones. My cassette deck on my component system died on me last year and I haven't bothered replacing it because I have a CD recorder (the kind that records just like cassette players do). I hope the companies still continue to make cassette decks for stereos though because I may eventually replace mine in the future because there's much more you can do creatively recording onto a cassette than onto a CD. With a cassette, you can either record over or edit out your mistakes when you make a mix (mix as in crossfading and blending). When it's being recorded onto CD, it's on there, mistakes and all. Plus the pause button on cassettes is great for making edits. You can always record the finished product from the cassette onto a CD once it's perfect.

Not true. In fact it's a growing trend for experimental electronic music to be released on cassettes in very small numbers. I just bought this one last week and I'm on the hunt for the previous two cassette installment. The people releasing music on cassettes able to do so in a way that a) gives them a lot of variety regarding the length of the release, b) keep the stuff off of P2P file sharing networks for a lot longer (trust me, I check), which actually creates a demand for it, c) release this stuff for less than what it would cost to press vinyl. CDRs would probably be cheaper, but not as cool, because that's what everybody else is doing. Also, TONS of DJ sets are still released on cassette. Again because of the ability to put 100 minutes of music on one cassette. Anyway, long ramble, but there really is still a surprising amount of music being released on this format.

Also, sounds like you need to invest in a DAT deck.

My first and only Walkman was red and I played Sign 'o' The Times on in A LOT.

PurpleJedi said:

JamFanHot said:

Death of a format...always nice for a moment of nostalgia. Had to dig up MY relic from '85..kinda the Ferrari of Walkmen @ the time (still works):

[img:$uid]http://tos-k.blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_248/tos-k/AIWA_HS-J400.jpg[/img:$uid]

Holy crap! Whatever happened to Aiwa? I remember lusting after one of those!

Yeah...Aiwa made a ton of different units @ that time (nice stuff). That thing above was RETARDED...had a cube mic & a little mini FM antenna that plugged into it. Was shocked that it still works.

I had a black Sony one, not sure what make, and then a gray one though I think someone was cleaning and didn't want it anymore.

JamFanHot said:

Death of a format...always nice for a moment of nostalgia. Had to dig up MY relic from '85..kinda the Ferrari of Walkmen @ the time (still works):

[img:$uid]http://tos-k.blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_248/tos-k/AIWA_HS-J400.jpg[/img:$uid]

I wanted one of these