Surprise, surprise; Sony has had a Walkman product in their product line since the 1980s. Cassettes are out and SD cards are in but still has all the control buttons you desire.
I have a digital Walkman for music in my car. I have >10K songs on it culled from my LP, CD, and purchased download collection. I put it on shuffle, and get my own radio station, because the ones around here either play too much of one genre, or music I'd rather not listen to a lot of.
It's like an old touch-screen iPod, but sounds better.
I bought one of these very soon after they came out. Used it while I walked my mail route. That had to be like the middle of 1980 maybe? I used it so much I wore out the drive belt. I went to where I bought it and in 3 days I had a new belt mailed to me. Opened it up and restrung it and it was as good as new.
Now, wow. 40 years is a long time or technology. I just stick a thumb drive into my car radio and listen to whatever I have copied to it. The irony is this. I do0n't really like listening to music anymore. I can watch TV on my phone with the sound running through Bluetooth, so as I drive I usually have a TV show playing in the background with the phone hanging from the magnetic vent mount. I'm not "watching" watching, but it's playing in the background. Add to that things like Amazon Music and the many streaming services... Wow what a time we are privilege to live in.
I had an uncle who was an old school polka accordion player and he had one of the first vinyl record players in his big old boat of a car. I think it was a 60s Chrysler Imperial but all I remember is that it had those big fins on the back. (I would have been like 9 or 10. A lot of notes have crossed my ears since.) Surprisingly that record player didn't skip nearly as much as you'd think. It was funny to watch him driving as he was constantly changing records. The one he had only played 45s, and one at a time. I don't even know if there were other models.
LOL---I remember those 92-minute TDKs. I still have my original Walkman (it was only an FM radio---but "Two Listener") in its little blue vinyl cover. Still works just fine. Re Sony tapes: They may be the only ones that ever sold Type III ("Ferrichrome") tapes.
Maybe some entrepreneur stumbled upon a warehouse full of unsold units and decided that the product now needs a big revival?
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Did anybody then buy a Discman? I had one of them but they didn't track well. Normal walking made it skip. In 2023 these are really outdated technology. Cell phones and Bluetooth and the streaming we have available have come too far for this kind of device to be relevant. Is there a car out there that doesn't have a Bluetooth radio? My car has Bluetooth and an Aux connector. Why? My only guess would be for people who continue to fight technology instead of adapt to it. When I want to listen to music, walking the dog usually, I connect to Amazon music, start a playlist I have created, connect my phone to the Bose QC35 nose canceling headphones, and off we go.
My last holdout Luddite friend finally bought a smart phone about 2 years ago and astonishingly was actually amazed by how much more it did than his flip phone. All I could do was shake my head, laugh and think "I have only been telling you that for like 5 years now!". His grandkids would want to video call him but his flip phone couldn't do it. That was the tipping point for him.
Much like the guy who continued to tell me the old chestnut of vinyl sounding better than digital recording. This from a guy who has tinnitus, uses hearing aids and can't hear above 3k. My own opinion is that I prefer a CD that sounds the same on the 1000th play as it did on the first. That same guy buys vinyl and immediately rips the tracks to WAV files so he doesn't scratch his vinyl. So then why spend money to buy vinyl of things you already have on CD? SMDH. When the 70+ generation is all dead I believe the dropoff is vinyl sales will be astonishing. This generation that never puts their cell phone down won't buy into that hype of "vinyl sounds better". Again my opinion but I really think that adage is just the war cry of the old people who know record players as "the right way".
Sony had good ideas but the execution of those portables is not relatable 40 years later due to the evolution of electronics.
The new Walkmans don't make financial sense these days as most (if not all) cell phones give the same features and functions.
We all need a cell phone these days so...
Kevin
Depends on how many songs you want. I have over 10,000 songs on my digital Walkman and it takes almost 40G of data. And I have a lot more songs in my CD/LP collection that I want to rip and put on it.
I use it for a car 'radio' and I can play the songs while using GPS, and if the phone rings I'm not going to answer while driving, but my wife is usually with me, she can answer without interrupting the music.
So for me it made sense for financial and convenience reasons. Of course, that's just me, YMMV.
I have a 500GB hard drive and for a while I had that plugged into the USB port in my car. The delivery rate of that spinning drive was not fast enough though so I bought a 256gb thumb drive with fast data throughput. When I stopped to think about it and looked at it from a practicality perspective, I never had more than about 8000 songs and there was no need to have that 500GB drive in there. Even on the thumb drive I am barely using it. The hard drive, now connected to my computer, still has 400GB free as well. It has now become just a song storage drive. (The only thing about using it in the car is that it has to be formatted as FAT32. It won't work as NTFS. It took a lot of hair pulling to figure that one out.)
And the kicker is how seldom I listen to music in the car. When I do I "binge" listen, like I get in the mood for The Cure I'll put 80-100 of their songs on an 8GB thumb drive and listen to that until I want to change to TOP, or ELO, of EWF, or AWB, or any of those 3 letter bands. (There's a drinking game. How many band names can you think of that you can boil down to 3 characters. TRS, TBB, TFS, TFF...)
Sad to say, music just isn't my main interest anymore.
I hear you... but I have a 256Gb fast SD card in my old Samsung S9+ smartphone which holds the entire collection of music I listen to regularly as well as backing tracks for live use.
I must admit I was dismayed when I upgraded to my Samsung S22 recently and found it had no SD card. It does have 256Gb storage so I guess that will have to do. (A lot of upgrades these days are downgrades.) No headphone socket means I have to use bluetooth headphones or a bluetooth reciever/transmitter to play through a PA system. The PA does have a SD card slot but the mechanism of choosing tracks is antiquated.
I'm the kind of guy who buys a new car, and drives it until it becomes a service problem. Because I drive gently and keep up with the mainenance, most of my cars go over 200k miles before they get traded in.
My current 2010 minivan (needed to haul my gig gear) has a mini phone jack, so a short cable from my Walkman makes it easy. A bit of Velcro puts the Walkman on the dash where I can see it.
Last Sunday we had a gig that was a bot more than an hour away. I charge more money for out of the county gigs, but these people are good with that. They usually hire us for their big celebration once a year, but missed the last two due to COVID. It was good to see them all again.
It was also good to have my Walkman, which Mrs. Noted dubbed, "Radio Bob" in the car. Radio Bob makes the drive more pleasant.
I put it in the shuffle mode, and I enjoy the variety. I have the pop/rock, shorter classical pieces, jazz, country, Soca, Reggae, Musica Latina, Zydeco, Blues, roots R&B, Klezmer, and others. The percentage of those styles are pretty much the percentage I like and how often I want to listen to them.
For the car, I rip at either 128 or 192, as the road noise masks the finer points of the sound.
If I drive to the Everlgades National Park, it takes about 4 hours, and the radio stations change on the trip. I just stick Radio Bob on the dashboard and enjoy the ride.
I like it being independent of the phone. Perhaps I'm just weird that way, but I've never been uncomfortable with being different before, and don't plan on that now.
There is more than one right way to do almost anything.
Band-in-a-Box 2026 for Windows Special Offers End Tomorrow (January 15th, 2026) at 11:59 PM PST!
Time really is running out! Save up to 50% on Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® upgrades and receive a FREE Bonus PAK—only when you order by 11:59 PM PST on Thursday, January 15, 2026!
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Version 2026 introduces a modernized GUI redesign across the program, with updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, and a new Dark Mode option. There’s also a new side toolbar for quicker access to commonly used windows, and the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, making it easier to customize your workspace.
Another exciting new addition is the new AI-Notes feature, which can transcribe polyphonic audio into MIDI. You can view the results in notation or play them back as MIDI, and choose whether to process an entire track or focus on specific parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
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Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® Special Offers Extended Until January 15, 2026!
Good news! You still have time to upgrade to the latest version of Band-in-a-Box® for Windows® and save. Our Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows® special now runs through January 15, 2025!
We've packed Band-in-a-Box® 2026 with major new features, enhancements, and an incredible lineup of new content! The program now sports a sleek, modern GUI redesign across the entire interface, including updated toolbars, refreshed windows, smoother workflows, a new dark mode option, and more. The brand-new side toolbar provides quicker access to key windows, while the new Multi-View feature lets you arrange multiple windows as layered panels without overlap, creating a flexible, clutter-free workspace. We have an amazing new “AI-Notes” feature. This transcribes polyphonic audio into MIDI so you can view it in notation or play it back as MIDI. You can process an entire track (all pitched instruments and drums) or focus on individual parts like drums, bass, guitars/piano, or vocals. There's an amazing collection of new content too, including 202 RealTracks, new RealStyles, MIDI SuperTracks, Instrumental Studies, “Songs with Vocals” Artist Performance Sets, Playable RealTracks Set 5, two RealDrums Stems sets, XPro Styles PAK 10, Xtra Styles PAK 21, and much more!
There are over 100 new features in Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®.
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Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: The Newly Designed Piano Roll Window
In this video, we explore the updated Piano Roll, complete with a modernized look and exciting new features. You’ll see new filtering options that make it easy to focus on specific note groups, smoother and more intuitive note entry and editing, and enhanced options for zooming, looping, and more.
Band-in-a-Box 2026 Video: AI Stems & Notes - split polyphonic audio into instruments and transcribe
This video demonstrates how to use the new AI-Notes feature together with the AI-Stems splitter, allowing you to select an audio file and have it separated into individual stems while transcribing each one to its own MIDI track. AI-Notes converts polyphonic audio—either full mixes or individual instruments—into MIDI that you can view in notation or play back instantly.
Bonus PAK and 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Windows®
With your version 2026 for Windows Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
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MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
Playable RealTracks Set 5
RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
Android Band-in-a-Box® App (included)
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
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