A tribute to the Walkman: dead but not forgotten

Sony’s Walkman forever changed the way we listen to music, making it for the first time portable. After 31 years, the company has announced they will discontinue the Walkman in Japan, effectively making them no longer available for purchase in the United States.

Americans have long moved on from the Walkman, listening to music on devices like the Discman, then simple MP3 players until the iPod came around in 2001. And in the nine years since the iPod, Apple has sold more than 100 million of those devices while in it’s more than 30 years, Sony sold around 200 million Walkmans.

But before the days of illegal file sharing, people recorded everything on cassettes, including each other’s albums and CDs, bootleg concerts and even discreet recordings of historic speeches and presentations. We asked listeners to think back and tell us their favorite song from the days of the Walkman. We go through your comments and reminisce about the portable cassette player with Keith Shoklee, who produced Public Enemy.