Updated 19 May, 2013, 5:16 pm IST

How Portable Music Players Became a Household Name

16 Dec, 2010 | by Ashish Koshy

The Music player of today has undergone many changes before reaching this level of functionality.

On a daly basis while you’re heading to work, college or just plain traveling by any means available, you see so many people with two wires stuck in their ears. The other end of this wire mysteriously disappears into the person’s pocket. You obviously know that it can either be a media player or maybe a multimedia phone but have you ever given any thought as to how exactly music evolved from those Vinyal records, to huge 9-track tapes to a tiny little gadget that could literally have stuck in your ear dishing out your favorite tunes by the hundreds? Well allow me to take you down memory lane and give you quick history lesson on the birth of the ultra portable media solution.

The birth of portable music

Enter the Samurai!

Sony made it big in the portable music scene when they officially came out with the Walkman. The idea of “carrying your music” was born when Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony asked audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara to build a portable cassette player so he could listen to operas during his trans-Pacific plane trips. Great idea!

Belted!

Sony weren’t the first to invent portable players though; Andreas Pavel invented a personal stereo audio player called the Stereobelt in 1972. He approached companies like Yamaha and Philips with his invention. They turned him down, saying people wouldn’t wear headphones in public for listening to music. Pavel still felt that it was important to patent his idea and filed for one in Italy followed by patent applications in the US, Germany, UK and Japan by the end of 1978.

The very next year, in 1979 Sony launched the Walkman TPS-L2 followed by some legal dealings with Andreas Pavel. Legal battles concerning royalty fees ensued for about twenty years. As per some reports, Sony paid around $10 million and ongoing royalties of the sale of certain Walkman models to Pavel in 2004.

Did you know the Walkman had aliases in different countries?� While it was called Walkman in Japan, the same gadget was called Soundabout in the US, Stowaway in the UK and Freestyle in Sweden. Different names, but the same quality by Sony.

Evolution from Portable Music to Portable Media
Portable media consists of both music and videos. While portable music became quite a craze through the Walkman, portable video players like Sony’s GV-8 were considered household luxuries.

Carry me around, I only need 3 people!

A very important aspect people had to consider while making portable players were the file formats that music had to undergo. The mp3 format became the favorite of most companies, where a track was compressed to 1/10th its size in the CD format. The mp3 is not the only format out in the market though; there are others like the wav, ogg and flac.

The first portable player to integrate both audio and video was the Multimedia Jukebox from Archos. The device didn’t go through a lot of hardships like Sony’s Walkman but at the same time, never became as popular either. The Multimedia Jukebox comes in the 10 GB and 20 GB variants, records audio in mp3 format and uses DivX MPEG4 format for video recording and playback. They transfer music using USB 1.0 technology and in case you are wondering, yes, they are still in production!

The next-gen portable media player

The PMP scenario went through a revolution with Apple introducing the iPod. Aggressive marketing and quality products made Apple’s iPod one of the most sought after gadgets in the early 2000’s.

Now that's what you call portable!

Today, the story has undergone small changes here and there. Though its still iPod ruling the roost in portable media players, other companies like Cowon and Creative are giving it quite a fight. The features are also improved with video recording, e-book readers, gaming and internet connectivity.

The future is bright!
While there are millions out there who find it convenient listening to the integrated music players in their mobile phones, I think a true music connoisseur would swear by the media player with audiophile passed settings and features. What can you expect from future players? There are quite a few features they can have actually. From playing 3D content, to projecting images and videos on a flat surface, technology has quite a bit to offer the average media player. Only time and innovative companies can tell us how awesome future media players would be!

Tags: PMP , Sony , Archos , Apple , iPod