Sony Walkman

Cassette sales peaked in 1989 and that's undoubtedly thanks to the creation of the Sony Walkman ten years earlier. There's a great feature where an otherwise modern 13 year-old swaps his iPod for the Walkman for a week at BBC.co.uk ["It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape"].

It is interesting to see how people who have only ever really been used to smaller, digital devices view this previously ubiquitous player. This was once cutting-edge stuff:

"Every rap track has a reference to Sony, yeah! It's not a plug for them though, it's just that Sony and their Walkmans are such a massive influence and the Sony Boodo Khan is the ultimate portable sound experience: extra bass and a really huge sound... It's a totally obsessive object and if you have something that you're really into, you constantly think about it, so when I think about words and music I constantly think of my Boodo Khan, it's that simple."

Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack in interview, Jocks magazine, 1991