Ask HN: People who were alive when walkmen were introduced. What was it like?

[TealMyEal]

As the title goes, I was chatting with a friend when we saw someone wearing a VR headset in public. We wondered what it was like when people first started carrying around Walkmans. The idea of a Walkman is to isolate you from the rest of the environment with audio. What was that like for the rest of the people in public? I think of the people sitting on a park bench, seeing someone walking by with a Walkman for the first time.

[msisk6]

I don't recall it being especially transformative. I was in high school from 1979 to 1983 and was an early adopter of a Walkman, probably sometime in 1980. It was fun to share it with friends and -- especially -- girls.

I probably wore it more around school off my ears and around my neck as some sort of status symbol more than actually listening to music between classes.

Eventually my high school banned them when someone recorded test answers on a cassette and used their Walkman to cheat on tests.

The TV show "Square Pegs" captured the era somewhat accurately. The character played by Merritt Butrick was one of those wearing a Walkman around everywhere and sort of reflected the way it felt. To me anyway. YMMV. :)

[fsagx]

>I probably wore it more around school off my ears and around my neck as some sort of status symbol more than actually listening to music between classes.

My parents bought the Panasonic knock-off for my brother for Christmas and he was mortified. He wouldn't even use it, so I got it. I think most people didn't know the difference anyway. Especially if the unit was in your pocket and all people saw were the headphones.

[TealMyEal]

https://youtu.be/sCaulGQEZ3E yeah i think that captures it pretty well. hilarious imagining that show going out today

[codingdave]

> The idea of a Walkman is to isolate you from the rest of the environment with audio.

No, I don't recall that being the point at all. The idea was to take your music with you. Listen while you walk, etc. While there are always people who will isolate themselves, that was in no way the intent. If anything, it caused more talk - "Hey, what are you listening to?" was a common question. Sharing headphones to listen to something together was definitely a thing.

[rapjr9]

It was a concern though. People worried that people wearing headsets would not hear cars and walk or bike into their path.

[8A51C]

Frequently used those headphone jack splitter things so two people can listen to the same thing.

[bloak]

Do you know Private Eye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Eye)? Around the 1980s, presumably shortly after the appearance of Walkman, they had a cartoon in each issue that generally had a scene of several people in a public place with one of them wearing headphones. I think the sound as perceived by other people in the picture was represented by the words "pish pish" but I can't at the moment find any trace of this online. I'm not really answering your question but I suppose that cartoon might help answer your question, if we had an archive of it, which we don't, so not much help really ...

[beardyw]

We had had transistor radios for some time, so the replacement of that by the Walkman was not particularly noticeable in the street. The concept of private listening had already been established.

[rapjr9]

Stereo HiFi personal music was a new thing though. Transistor radios were mono and were listened to through a low fidelity crystal earphone in one ear. The time was ripe for mobile personal cassette players though, business had been using small portable cassette recorder/players for a while to dictate notes while away from the office. They became very cheap; I bought one in college and connected it to the Sennheiser headphones I used with my stereo using a hacked adapter from Radio Shack. It was mono but I had mobile cassette music perhaps a year before the Walkman came out. It was kind of surreal to have my own personal music while walking, where I could listen to lots of stuff that would never get radio play. For example, listening to King Crimson while walking through a department store. It made the world seem different, I had more control over the environment, I didn't have to listen to the Musak or hear people talking. People would stop me and ask about the system and go off and build their own. There were probably quite a few people who invented their own before Sony released the Walkman.

[NomDePlum]

It made little difference is my memory.

Even if you were wearing headphones the same social norms where in place. You said hello to those you knew, and if someone looked like they might talk to you you took the headphones off and talked to them.

It wasn't a barrier to others, it was a way of listening to music you liked privately.

[taylodl]

Boom boxes were more of the thing in my scene. Music was still social and people loved listening to mix tapes.

[TealMyEal]

much more tv/projector than socially isolating, thanks

[craigdalton]

Wasn't that revolutionary from an "isolation" perspective. There had been people waking around with small "pocket" radios with earphones for maybe a decade before Walkman was released in 1979. Listening to music, news, sport. Google Cliff Richard's "Wired for Sound" released about 2 years after first Walkman to get a sense of the contemporaraneous vibe.

[muzani]

I think it was still too early for music. Walkmen never really took off back when I was in school. VR headsets were around for 10 years or more. They're an experience, but nobody is excited about them.

One of the problems of the time were that music was only in albums. Some artists had good singles, but few had good albums, and you were limited to whatever album you brought around with you at the time.

The other thing was that all entertainment was mostly social. Like you didn't watch Simpsons alone, everyone else did. Why listen to onlyy your own songs? Most of mine were weird goth or grunge stuff. But if you were listening to Metallica or something cool, it would be out loud.

IMHO cassettes sounded a lot better. Or maybe it was because the expectations were lower then. My first experience was a Walkman was actually listening to it in my room in bed. Similar with a smartphone. You didn't necessarily want it to be socially isolating. It seems to be why VR hasn't picked up; people get nervous about being isolated for so long.

[bamboozled]

One of the problems of the time were that music was only in albums.

We just made our own mixes on our own tapes ?

[cpach]

This. People also tuned in the radio, and when a good song came on they would be quick to hit the record button.

[ActorNightly]

Besides what others said, walkmen were the origin of the term mixtape, where you basially had to play music real time from a cassette, and record it on another cassette. Recording radio was pretty common.

There was debates about quality (that lasted even into the CD era) about music quality. Generally, vinyl was considered better in almost all forms, I don't remember hearing much about audiophiles using casettes.

Imo CD era with digital music more prominent when they came out (first in box form, then in mobile walkman form), because you could get high quality audio on them. This pretty much transformed the DJ world as CDJs started replacing vinyl decks, which aligned with the rise of electronic music since you could do stuff with digital audio that you couldn't do with analog (set cue points, auto beat match, and trigger without having to manually spin the decks)

[tacostakohashi]

> The idea of a Walkman is to isolate you from the rest of the environment

I guess my vague memories are that wasn't really how they were used in practice. The primary use case was things like during jogging / exercise, long bus/car/plane trips, that kind of thing.

Batteries were expensive, didn't last that long, and they the amount of music you could store or carry around on tapes was limited, so people weren't using them 24/7 like they do with phones these days.

If anything, they were a catalyst for social interaction as people would share mix tapes, listen to music together either with one earphone each or a headphone splitter, compare notes on the latest and greatest models, etc.

[SpinningDisc]

I remember, and on reflection, this was the beginning of the end for durability.

Before Walkman, nobody would carry an untethered device which would break if dropped from waist height. Watches were our most expensive everyday carry - secured with straps or on chains.

After Walkman, the market accepted fragility and therefore an endless conveyor belt of broken stuff going into landfill. Encasing mobile phones in glass is the zenith of this madness.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

They weren't as disruptive as cell phones, or handheld gaming consoles.

Just nice to have. I mainly used mine to ride my road bicycle like crazy through the forest, to an endless loop of 'Lucifer' by Alan Parsons Project. Or other stuff while riding the subway. And if you were smart you didn't listen at max volume anyways, while the feeble on ear headpieces just rested lightly on your ears. So there was a muted awareness of what was going on around you.

[seabass-labrax]

> to an endless loop of 'Lucifer' by Alan Parsons Project

Since this is tapes we're talking about, I'm curious: was this a literally endless loop? Battery life permitting, naturally.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Hm. I don't know exactly anymore. I 'mastered' that from vinyl, about 8 minutes long, onto a chrome-something cassette, 30 minutes per side. And the walkman had something like 'autochange', so it could play the other side without you having to turn the cassette. That lasted for up to 4 hours at full blast, I think.

During those 4 hours, that blasted me up to 75kph on flat grounds without headwinds for maybe two minutes, otherwise sustained performance anything between 55kph to 65kph for one hour, depending on fitness, weather, traffic, whatever.

Interestingly the cadence of my pedaling in highest gear never matched, except for the few very percussive sequences, maybe.

Maybe I just liked the thought of riding like HIM >:>

I know this sounds unlikely, but I unknowingly did so called 'interval training', as I later found out. That's how I got that fast.

[TealMyEal]

thanks, funny how just this morning i was listening to Wouldnt want to be like you cycling though a forrest. just instead of a walkman its snazzy earphones and cellphones. but yeah funny now its a lot more socially audio isolating

[wruza]

Walkman arrived late to my place, and I don’t remember that it did too much of “what it was like”. Just teens walking with headphones.

What actually did it was hands-free. A guy walking, talking and flailing hands to no one was somewhat crazy and even scary to people unaware of technology.

Also, some people still get surprised when you use Siri right in front of them (not because it’s bad, they just never thought about it).

[moomin]

I remember being a teenager walking around forests listening to Live In The City Of Light.

Portable music already existed, in the form of boomboxes, but Walkmen were personal with a whole different dynamic.

I think people these days don’t realise how OK people were with just being bored before mobile phones. You could pick an album, pick a book, but you couldn’t flit around the way you can these days. Whether that’s a good or bad thing I’m somewhat agnostic on.

[p0d]

I remember laying in bed listening to The Cure and being amazed at all the different sounds I could hear. I also remember loving being able to listen to Survivor while running.

As others have said, there was no sense of social isolation. This is nore of a modern construct as people become more focussed on self and less on those physically around them.

[mikewarot]

Portable tape recorders date back to the 1950s, decades before the Walkman, as did portable transistor radios. It was more of a fashion statement than actual utility.

[mediumsmart]

It was great. Pressing the orange foam pieces against the open train announcer mic on a subway station, turning it up some and leaking the isolated audio - fun times.

[mapster]

It was a luxury at first, then an expensive consumer electronic, unless you bought off brand. The Zip drive was more transformative I think.

[sharmi]

Walkman was the first device I got saving up pocket money. So it was definitely affordable.

[thebruce87m]

The funniest thing was that when the batteries ran low the music would get slower and slower. It happened gradually so it wasn’t noticeable until it was blatantly obvious that people were singing in “slow motion”.

[adamredwoods]

Portable headphones were not as good back then, just little bits of foam over some bad speakers.

[8A51C]

Which meant that everyone around got the tinny dings of your music, so it was quite anti-social and you were asked to turn it down (by family or companions, rarely strangers) which usually meant you couldn't hear it well over the ambient noise and ended up turning it off. Nobody used the big on ear headphones outside the house. The big isolation change for me was better sealed in-ear ones with a digital player, ipod, mp3 etc, where you could exclude the ambient more and have decent quality.

[perilunar]

But they sounded awesome compared to the little mono earphones than portable pocket radios typically came with.

[cranberryturkey]

it was cool. i used to walk about a mile to school and wore my walkman, although we weren't very wealthy so I had a knockoff brand, not a Sony.

[RecycledEle]

Walkmans made music possible, if you had the spare batteries.

Batteries were the limitation.