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The free ConcertVault iPhone app gives you streaming access to hundreds of live recordings.
Wolfgang’s Vault is an online archive containing hundreds of high-quality concert recordings, mostly from big classic-rock artists like The Who and U2, but with a few newer artists, such as The Walkmen, thrown in as …
Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech
Sir Howard Stringer is in the house for Sony’s IFA press conference. Please refresh this post to read new comments.
11:06 Talking about how Sony is changing.
11:08 The 3d train is on the track. Focus on cinema 3d.
4k digital projectors. Up to 1300 3d projectors in Regal Cinemas.
11:14 3d content coming to Sky in UK and Blu Ray disks. Expect more 3d on tv next year.
Moto Storm on PS3 is pretty hot. 3d changes the experience.
Now talking about video delivery on the Playstation Network. Lots of European partners.
11:19 PSN content coming to other devices – not just Playstation/PSP. Huh.
New global brand message. Make.Believe.
Contribute content to Sony. Connects designers and engineers.
Seriously not sure what it means. It’s weird. It will connect brands, services, and content.
11:25 Fujio Nishida now on stage. President of Sony Europe. He says people are watching less TV.
TV programming is for sit back watching. Much more enjoyable if online content could hit the tv. Bravia tvs with new Bravia Internet Video.
Triple HD tuners for satellite users.
Blu Ray players will have built in wifi.
11:30 Exmor chips better low light video and stills. WX1 and TX1 are the flagship cameras. Sweep panorama mode creates a stitched image in a second.
Party Shot device for parties.
Pans and zooms as guests pass by.
Now talking about Alpha DSLRs.
Planning Twilight Football games. Games played at twilight in multiple countries.
11:41 Now for Sony Xperia X2 with winmo 6.5.
Sony readers. We’ve already seen them. Meh.
Walkmen. OLED touchscreens. Wearable walkmen. Boring Sydney booring.
Now Vaio X series. Sony ultralight. 11 inch screen. All day battery. Released next year.
11:48 All done.
So the first one is the Walkman E. Pretty hot. LCD screen, video playback, two-tone design. No pricing or storage sizing.
Just 9.3mm thin and available in black and red, the super-compact WALKMAN® E Series slips easily into a pocket or bag. Despite its small size, it’s packed with serious features to enhance enjoyment of your personal media collection.
The generously-sized 2-inch QVGA Colour LCD screen offers a crisp, detail-packed view of videos, photos, album art, playlists and other functions.
As you’d expect from WALKMAN®, the E Series is packed with unique Sony sound enhancement features for a more satisfying listening experience.
It’s the first E series WALKMAN® to feature Clear Audio technology by Sony for a dynamic, detail-packed soundstage. Clear Stereo reduces leakage between left and right channels, while Clear Bass delivers powerful, controlled low-end frequencies without distortion.
There’s also a 5-band equaliser to fine-tune your listening enjoyment. In addition, a Dynamic Normalizer balances volume levels between songs ensuring a smooth, comfortable listening experience.
Importing music, video and photos is quick and fuss-free, with simple drag-and-drop from your PC’s media folder or via iTunes[1] 8.1 using Content Transfer.
A range of major music and video formats are supported including rights-managed WMA and WMV. In a WALKMAN® first, there’s now support for video file format conversion via the supplied Content Transfer software.
For even more listening choice there’s a high quality FM radio tuner. Broadcasts can be recorded at the touch of a button, to enjoy whenever you want.
Great sound and smart features are teamed with extra-long battery life. The WALKMAN® E Series delivers up to 30 hours of music or 6 hours of video playback on a single charge – more than enough entertainment for the daily commute or short trips away.
Then there’s the inexplicable Walkman B.
WALKMAN® B Series MP3 players
• Small, Ultra-light player in choice of four colours
• Easy operation with drag-and-drop file transfers
• ZAPPIN™ for quick, easy song searches
• Bass button for powerful low frequency enhancement
• 18 hr music playback and Quick Charge battery
• FM tuner with recording facility
They’ll be available this month. Woot.
How much do you know about the most celebrated personal stereo of all time, one that is today turning the big Three Oh? A lot? OK, hell, let’s see what you got:
1. In the Walkman’s first 10 years, how many different designs did Sony release?
A) 25
B) 70
C) 130
D) 170
2. What was the full product name of the first Walkman?
A) Super Karate Monkey Machine
B) WM-1
C) TPS-L2
D) Excalibur
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.3. What is the official, Sony-approved plural form of Walkman?
A) Walkmans
B) Walkmen
C) Walkmanidae
D) Walkman personal stereos
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.4. What is another name that the Walkman was to have gone by?
A) Soundabout
B) Freestyle
C) Stowaway
D) Super Karate Monkey Machine
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.5. What was the original desired name for the Walkman?
A) Stereo Buddy
B) Music Boy
C) Stereo Walky
D) Singman
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.6. What was the inspiration for the Walkman?
A) Sony founder Masaru Ibuka wanted to listen to opera tapes during his long trans-Atlantic flights
B) Sony president Akio Morita wanted to listen to music while he played tennis
C) In 1978, Sony’s cassette division had lost its radio-cassette business to the radio division, and needed to impress their bosses with something new
D) All of the above
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.7. How many Walkman units sold in the first 10 years?
A) 1 million
B) 10 million
C) 50 million
D) 100 million
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.8. And how many competing Walkman clones sold?
A) 10 million
B) 50 million
C) 100 million
D) 150 million
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.9. Complete this sentence from a 1981 UK Daily Mirror article: “The Walkman has become the _________ of electronics.”
A) Hairpiece
B) Skateboard
C) Lucky Strike
D) Hula Hoop
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.10. Which all-time great wrestler/movie star does the figure in the Walkman 10th-anniversary monument (at left) resemble?
A) “Macho Man” Randy Savage
B) Andre the Giant
C) Jesse “The Body” Ventura
D) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
1. (D) 170 different models, so basically 17 per year on average, enough to suit every man woman and child. [Source; Image Source]
2. (C) TPS-L2 – We’re not entirely sure what happened to TPS-L1, but they quickly switched to the WM naming system. [Source]
3. (D) “Walkman personal stereos,” which is totally unfair for journalists with tight word counts. “Walkmen” is a band, however, if you like bands named after your personal electronics. [Source]
4. (A) in the US (B) in Sweden (C) in the UK, but alas never (D) [Source]
5. (C) “Stereo Walky” – but, fortunately, Walky was already trademarked by Toshiba [Source]
6. (D) All of the above, and probably a handful of other apocryphal tales, too. [Source, Source; Image Source]
7. (C) 50 million [Source]
8. (D) 150 million, proving you can’t patent a general concept, no matter how slick. [Source; Image Source]
9. (B) Skateboard [Source]
10. (B) Andre the Giant—seriously, doesn’t he? [Source]
ANSWER KEY [Image Source]
Special serious thanks to Don the Intern for kicking ass all over the research end of our little Walkman 30th-anniversary party. Don’t forget to check out our gallery of the craziest Walkman models, and of course, those brilliant Walkman ads from back in the 1980s. Hat tips to Pocket Calculator’s Walkman Museum and to Tim and Nick Jarman’s Walkman Central.
To commemorate the Sony Walkman‘s 30th birthday, here are the trippy ads Sony used to promote it in the ’80s. Noble monkeys, off-key kids and sweet-toothed senseis—where’s that f’d up sense of humor now, Sony?
Back in 1983, Sony declared the WM-10 Super Walkman the “world’s smallest cassette player,” and promoted it with ads that appealed to the dudes and to the ladies. There’s the fantasy hardware building demonstration, 1 minute into the following ad compilation (here if you don’t want to wade through Seth Green’s Matchbox spot and the rockin’ Simon hair-band ad):
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
And then there’s the dancer who’d prefer a slenderer music player:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
OK, maybe that second one appealed to anybody with a leotard fixation (which, in 1983, was pretty much everybody).
Most people in their 30s will hate me for bringing this one up: The 1986 My First Sony campaign was responsible for sticking the following song inside the heads of a generation of people who are just now able to forget it. Click at your own peril…
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Here’s one of the last cassette Walkman commercials, from 1990 or thereabouts, where a father grills his ridiculously dumb daughter on the pictures that appear on TV. She gets everything wrong—everything—but he let’s her mistaken sighting of a Walkman slide, because Walkmen (Walkmans?) are so cool.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
And about that noble monkey, his name was Choromatsu, and he died at the extremely ripe age of 29 back in 2007. Here’s his 1988 spot, in which he grips a (Japan-only?) WM-501 and contemplates nature:
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
Before the zany TV commercials there were the fat-bucking-insane print ads. For instance, the small sampling below contains:
• A slick-looking posse of urbanites with nice shoes and likely heroin addictions
• A sensei sucking a lollipop while sitting next to a nipply lass 2X his height
• A lady perilously guiding a ten-speed at velocity while holding a Walkman
Special shoutout to Don the Intern for those mad researching skills. Hat tips to Pocket Calculator’s Walkman Museum, to Tim and Nick Jarman’s Walkman Central and to Bing’s image search tool. Try it out—it’s really quite different than Google’s.