Today Show July 27 – Sony Walkman Turns 30

Clip courtesy of the Nine Network Australia

Today was a great example of how technology marches along and will wait for no one, with the 30th anniversary of the Walkman.

Back in the day, the Walkman revolutionised how people listened to music. It was a portable music experience that took you out of the home or car, and let you listen to your favourite sounds anywhere you liked.

As I demonstrated on the Today Show, it meant that you could exercise to music – go jogging, running, or do an exercise class.

Then came the chunky discman, which had a relatively short lifespan due to the advent of the digital music revolution.

Although formats have changed – just look at the iPod or any half-decent mobile phone – the actual size hasn’t changed so much, but the capacities and sound quality has. Back in the day, all you had was a cassette tape by a particular artist and 10-25 songs to choose from depending on the size of the album.

These days, thanks to digital technology, you can literally have thousands of songs at the press of a button.

So what does the future hold? Well, I’m no fortune teller, but I believe that sizes of music players will shrink, but their capacity to hold even more songs will go up. And I believe the Walkman, in one form or another, will probably be around for another 30 years