The Best Idea Yet - 🎧 Sony Walkman: The Analog Icon That Led to a Digital Revolution | 49

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

In postwar Tokyo, two engineers were tinkering with rice cookers and busted home radios when they stumbled across a new kind of audio technology: magnetic tape. It inspired them to create a range of ahead-of-their-time tape recorders — and the success took Sony from small repair shop to global electronics powerhouse.Then, in 1979, after decades of bringing cutting-edge tech to homes across the world, they released their most surprising hit: a little cassette player you could clip to your belt.Their invention made music portable and personal. For the first time, you could jog along to Bon Jovi, ride the bus with Blondie, and moonwalk to work with Michael Jackson. It turned headphones into a fashion statement, launched the mixtape era, and kicked off a global obsession with portable tech — paving the way for the iPod and the iPhone.So slip in your party mixtape and press play as we take a moonshot with Barbra Streisand (seriously), unpack how Sony could’ve (should’ve?) won the digital music wars, find out why Steve Jobs smashed his Walkman to pieces, and why the Sony Walkman is the best idea yet.Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterFollow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting www.wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the best idea yet early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. All right, Jack, can you pull out this shoebox with all the cassette mixtapes in there? Let me rewind you to 2004. My pastime as a child was making my own mixtapes with my buddies Dave and Johnny. You need a giant boombox, the one with... two cassette players. You play the cassette that your buddy owns on one player, and then you copy that song onto the other player. Oh, you were burning, baby. When Molly and I were long distance,

I made her mixtapes. Oh, no. But I made her a different CD for different parts of the drive. What? I had an I-95 CD for that highway, which was like a little bit more urban-upy kind of a thing. And then like an I-93 CD, which is like a little more rural, you know what I mean? Boyfriend of the Year Award. Thank you, man. But yet he's, despite Nick showing all of us up with the romance of that gesture, the hero product of today's show

is the incredible invention that paved the way for mixtapes and personal soundtracks, the ancestor of the iPod. It's the Sony Walkman. You really feel the music with a Sony Walkman. The Sony Walkman is a tiny stereo cassette player with truly incredible sound. You really feel the music.

You really feel the music. The first truly portable music player that let you take your tunes anywhere, before digital music, the internet, or the spice girls. We're talking analog cassettes here. The Sony Walkman may sound retro now. But when it launched in 1979, this portable music player was a life-liberating breakthrough, and it actually built the very foundation for the consumer tech products we all use today. Before the Walkman, the only people you saw wearing headphones were air traffic controllers

and the sound people on film sets. And back then, Jack, you could only listen to music in a fixed location. Once you left your house or your car, you left the beach boys back at home. Unless, of course, you carried around a 35-pound boombox with two cassette players. And annoyed everybody on the subway. Don't forget the debattaries. But when Japanese electronics giant Sony launched the Walkman, all of that changed. Suddenly, you could jog while jamming out to your music.

Commute while vibe into your tunes. Roller skate to your own personal. disco. The Walkman was a cultural touchstone for cool 80s kids, but it came from the minds of two electronics nerds who got their start repairing broken radios in Warravaged Japan. Together, they built a nearly $160 billion electronics empire, making everything from TVs to video game consoles to specialty medical gear. Sony today is bigger than Nike, Starbucks, and Nintendo. It's the third biggest entertainment business on planet Earth. And the Walkman was just a just the start, but it was too revolutionary for its own good.

This trip is going to take us to some unexpected places, like flying to the moon with Barbara Streisand. And we'll find out why Steve Jobs broke his Walkman into pieces. In a good way, we'll learn how subtraction can be a superpower and why intuition beats information on launch day. All right, Nick, it's time to take the tape out, flip it over, and push play. Here's why the Sony Walkman is the best idea yet. From Wonderry and T-boy, I'm Nick Martell.

And I'm Jack Kravici Kramer. And this is the best idea yet. The untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. And the bold risk takers who made them go viral. I got that feeling again. Something familiar but new. We got it coming to you. I got that feeling again.

They change the game in one move It's how they broke all the rule It's your man Nick Cannon I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at night Every week I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends And the best experts in the business To answer your most intimate relationship questions So don't be shy, join the conversation

And head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night Or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. A pair of American soldiers walk down a quiet street in downtown Tokyo. They're members of the U.S. forces still stationed in Japan after World War II. They're helping with security and the massive task of rebuilding. Most windows in the city are dark because in late 1945, electricity is spotty and it's expensive. So seeing a light on after dark is rare.

which is why the soldiers stop outside the Sharokia department store. They can see a light flickering up on the third floor. The soldiers exchange a look. Looters, maybe? They circle to the alley behind the store and they wait. After a few minutes, a back door creaks open and two figures step out. The soldiers turn their flashlights on, and the men freeze. They raise their hands in the air as the things they're carrying drop to the ground with a clank.

But the stuff they ditch, it isn't stolen goods. just a soldering iron and a battered metal toolbox. When the soldiers demand an explanation, one of the men slowly reaches into his jacket and pulls out a scuffed card with hand-printed English. It says their names are Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. They're engineers who have set up a small workshop above the department store, and they're so busy, they often work pretty late.

Looking at them, white shirts and neat ties under their coveralls, hair parted, glasses straight, the soldiers buy the story. and they let the two guys go on their way. Ibuca and Morita met during the war, working on Japan's wartime research committee, a group tasked with developing new tech for the military. Ibuka is 12 years older than Morita and more reserved.

He's a lifelong tinkerer with an almost magical touch when it comes to wires and circuits. If your microwave starts making weird clanging sounds, Ibuka is your guy. Well, Marita is the more outgoing personality and the business brains of the duo. If Ibuka is fixing your microwave, Marita is asking you why you bought that cheap brand in the first place.

He actually grew up dreaming of taking over his family's sake company, but despite his appreciation for fine rice wine, he just couldn't resist the pull of technology. And after graduating in 1944 with a major in physics, he joined Japan's Navy Air Technical Arsenal. Together, Ibuka and Morita helped the military build new ways to detect some Marines. Not exactly their dream jobs, because both men would rather help people not hunt them. But they bond over a shared belief that technology should be used to make a better life for

everyone. So, Jack, when the war ends, they don't want to find an easy job sitting in a lab for a secure paycheck. These two are dreaming of building a company, one that can stand for innovation, optimism, and to help Japan rebuild itself. So they decide to start a business, and they call it in English, the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company. A little clunky jack by that, we can roll with it. One night, spitballing on how they can help their war-torn nation rise from its literal ashes, they start scribbling their vision for the company on a piece of paper. This is a set of founding principles.

Ibuka writes down, useful and innovative technology, while Marita, he wants to champion creativity over hierarchy. And as the sun sets behind Mount Fuji, Ibuka and Marita fire up their gas lamps and, keep on working through the night. One of them suggests placing the needs of society above quick profits. In other words, they're building a company with a purpose. But in post-war Japan, building a company, much less one with purpose, isn't easy.

Because of material shortages, they have to make screwdrivers from old motorcycle springs. They use telephone cable as electrical wire. One of their early products is a rice cooker made from old wooden tubs. Then they hit on an idea that starts winning them regular business. Radio Repair. During the war, Japanese authorities didn't want citizens tuning into Allied broadcasts. So military police would actually go house to house, cutting the wires in people's radios. It was a form of state-sponsored sabotage to cut off Japanese citizens from getting outside information.

But now, with the war over and American forces in charge, people are desperate to get their radios working again. Demand is so high, Ibuka and Morida can barely keep up with it. Then one morning, a game-changing request comes in from NHK, Japan's national broadcaster. They want Ibuca and Morita to help convert old military radio gear into civilian relay stations. This is a huge job, vital to Japan's post-war recovery. Exactly the kind of work Ibuka and Marita envisioned in that late-night manifesto. So, Marita turns to Ibuka and says, we're going to need a bigger office, man. And then Ibuka turns to Marita and says,

We're going to need more people, man. Yeah, it's time to scale up. And that contract with Japan's top broadcaster sets them up for a chance encounter that will change the company and change the way the world listens to music forever. Ibuka and Morita have swapped their oily coveralls for crumpled suits.

Because they're not getting ready for a repair job today. They're here for a business meeting with their biggest customer. This is NHK Radio Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Tall, narrow windows are set into vertical columns, and sitting on top of the flat roof is a towering radio antenna. This building, it ain't just home to Japan's national broadcaster, is it, man? It also happens to be the HQ for the U.S. Armed Forces in Japan. That's right. Right now, 1949, there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops stationed across the country overseeing Japan's reconstruction.

Ibuka and Marita have become friendly with some of the Americans working at the civil information and education. section. And today, as they passed the door to the section's office, one of the Americans calls them in to show off a new piece of equipment. And what they're looking at is a big box with two spinning spools, and between the reels runs a thin strip of black tape. One of the Americans leans over a microphone attached to this contraption and speaks into it. Testing, one, two, three. And then they spool back the tape, hit play, and the voice comes back at them, out of the speaker. Testing, one, two, three, testing, one, two, three.

Like magic or something. Ibuka and Marina, they probably got in their hands on a thousand different radios at this point. But they've never seen anything like this before. Until now, recording sound has been an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. You need a big, bulky, special equipment that uses a needle to physically carve sound waves into spinning wax discs? This new machine, on the other hand,

wow, this is different. This can record and playback sounds in seconds. The secret is in the tape. That plastic ribbon is coated in a magnetic material. This machine takes the signal from the microphone and uses magnets to encode the sound wave onto the tape. Eddie Buka is so blown away, he makes a pretty bold ask.

Um, can I borrow that machine? A few days later, American office. officers actually deliver it to his office. The team gathers around and starts experimenting by recording their own voices, playing them back, doing it again, and over and over and over, marveling at these recording playback results. None of them have seen this before, but they're all taking the same thing. We got to make one of our own.

After a full year of experimenting, Ibuka, Marita, and their team finally have a working prototype. They hit record and they say these words. Anjitsuwa, satan, nari. Which means today we have fine weather. By the way, that is actually what you say to test a microphone in Japan, even if it's a howling gale outside. Today, we have fine weather. This thing works.

And within a few months, they're making tape recorders for schools, government offices, and radio stations. And in 1951, they released their first consumer model, the H-type, weighing in at a late 28 pounds. Now, at this time, that's considered portable, which, I mean, 28 pounds is like the size. size of our Labradoodle. So, they give this thing a shoulder strap and say, good luck.

But after a few hours of lugging it around, you've herniated a couple of discs in your back. This thing looks like an inside-out stereo. The tape spools are large and exposed on the outside, so they're very easy to get knocked off or tangled. Now, this thing's not sophisticated enough to give you a high fidelity playback, a Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, but it is perfect for speech. This is the OG version of the voice memo app on your phone. With this new tape recorder, radio stations can pre-record segments.

Professors can tape their history lectures. Journalists can record their interviews. And every 8-year-old worldwide can finally record that fart sound. Now, tape recorders are already being used this way in the United States, but those American-made machines, they're way too expensive for Japanese buyers. So Ibuka and Marita's company has the home market all to themselves. But then in 1952, something shakes Ibuka and Morita to their core. Literally.

An earthquake hits Japan's snow-capped northern island of Hokkaido. Tokyo is undamaged, but it makes Ibuka and Morita realize just how vulnerable they are. What if Tokyo had been hit by the earthquake? All they're manufacturing, a lot of their customers, they're all based in that one city. The quake is a major wake-up call, concentrating all their operations in one city, in one country, and in one product is a dangerous bet. If they want to build a lasting company that can fulfill the dreams of their manifesto,

they need a change. So they start thinking about going international and building not just tape players, but everything. Like every electronic thing. If you can plug it in, they want to build it. And Marita knows that they need a new name if they're going to go global. They're going to need something that's easy to say in any language.

Something short, snappy, borderless. What about Sony? Sony. It comes from the Latin Sonas, meaning sound, a nod to their roots in audio technology. But this name isn't just a highbrow flex, because it also reminds them of the term Sunny Boy, a nickname they'd hear American GIs calling kids on the streets of Tokyo. So for Marita, it's casual, friendly, and human, exactly the kind of brand they want to build. And with a name like Sony, quick, catchy global, they're ready to take their dreams to build a tech utopia overseas. Ibuka? Yeah, he always liked the challenge.

Jack, what do you say we start with the biggest, boldest market of them all? America. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste.

View. And enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. On Boxing Day, 2018, 20-year-old Joy Morgan, was last seen at her church, Israel United in Christ, or IUIC. I just went on my Snapchat and I just see her face plastered everywhere. This is the missing sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most. IUIC is my family and like the best family that I've ever had.

But IUIC isn't like most churches. This is a devilish cult. You know when you get that feeling, man, you just, I don't want to be here. I want to get out. It's like that feeling of, like, I want to go hang out. I'm Charlie Brent Coast Cuff, and after years of investigating Joy's case, I need to know what really happened to Joy.

Binge all episodes of The Missing Sister exclusively an ad-free right now on Wonderry Plus. Start your free trial of Wondery Plus on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or in the Wonderry app. If you're going to throw a party, then the corner of Fifth Avenue and 47th Street, Midtown Manhattan, is a pretty darn good spot. It's 1962, and for the first time in America since the start of World War II, a Japanese flag flutters in the breeze. Inside Sony's new showroom, there are portable radios, reel-to-reel tape players, and the company's latest product. a portable black and white TV that comes in its own padded carrying case.

In the last decade, Sony's been pumping out innovative products at Tommy Edison Pace. And one of their most popular is a range of battery-powered portable radios, and they've just come out with a portable television, which these New Yorkers are flocking a seat in the new showroom. It's 1962, and Sony is already crushing it. Revenues hit over $3 million that year, or $31 million in today's money. Meanwhile, Morita has been spending more time abroad, trying to build Sony into an international brand. And on returning from one of these trips, he rushes into Ibuka's office with a box tucked under his arm.

It's a prototype for a new tape machine from a Dutch company called Phillips, and it looks different. It's not the player itself that's got Marita excited. It's the way it reads tape. It doesn't use those too big exposed reels of tape. Instead, the reels are tiny, only a few inches across, and this part's key. They're sealed within a plastic shell, so it's neat and compact. You just pop it into the machine and press play. What our two guys are staring out right here is the cassette tape.

The cassette tape! And Jack, it's not just the form, it's the function. Because unlike vinyl, which you can only play, these cassettes can also be used to record. You can tape your own voice or music from the radio and records or even record your very own snoring so you can leave it playing while you sneak out of the house after bedtime. So the Sony duo call up Phillips and they strike a deal. Sony gets to adopt this cassette format and Phillips agrees to waive royalties. Now they want to move fast to dominate the new market for cassette players. The new team, Sony and Phillips,

are working together to make better cassette tapes and players. They increase the audio range so that music on tape goes from sounding thin and reedy like this. to full of depth and range like this. This teamworked boost in quality and convenience means, by the mid-1960s, the cassette tape takes off as a music format. But what they don't realize, this little plastic rectangle is about to change not just how we listen to music, but where we listen to it. You hear that, Nick?

Oh, no mistake in those pipes jack. That's Barvis Streisand. But we're not on Broadway. In fact, we're about as far from Broadway as any human being has ever been. Off, off Broadway? Add a few thousand more offs, my friend. Okay. Because it's July 20th, 1969, and we're inside the Apollo 11 Command Module,

250,000 miles from Earth, with the loneliest man in the universe, Michael Collins. His shipmates, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, strap into their lunar module, which is about to bring man to the moon for the first time ever. But Collins stays behind in orbit to look after the Columbia Command module. As Collins looks out the window, he watches Earth shrink,

then vanish behind the moon. Radio contact with Mission Control in Houston cuts out. For the next 48 minutes, it's just him. No voices, no lights, no signal. But he does have Babs, thanks to a cassette spinning in a small machine about the size of a paperback truck. This machine is the Sony T.C.

It basically looks like a proto-Walkman. It's a whole decade before the Walkman actually came out, but I feel like we're staring at it right now as America lands on the moon. NASA issued this Sony-built compact tape recorder to the crew so they could dictate mission notes while they're up in space. But Nick, it has a built-in speaker So the crew spotted an opportunity to take a slice of audio heaven from Earth up into orbit.

They made a mixtape. In addition to Babs, they've got tunes from Glenn Campbell, some blood, sweat and tears, even some spacey sound and jazz. But even though the astronauts are listening to tunes on this thing way out in the final frontier, no one sees this as anything more than a fun one-off stunt for the Apollo mission. The idea of portable music just isn't a concept that appears on anybody's radar. until almost 10 years later, on a much less exciting flight. As Sony is taking off internationally, its co-founder, Masaru Ibuka, finds himself taking more and more long international flights.

There's that tech conference in Zurich, the new office opening in London. Oh, and Jack, don't forget about the team-building event down in Rio. To pass the time on these long trips, he lugs around Sony's latest innovation, a high-end portable cassette player. It's specifically designed for music, and opera-loving Ibuka just wants to settle back in business class, plug in his headphones, and zone out to some Puccini on the plane. Sounds lovely.

It's now 1978, and the idea of a portable music player is very different to ours today. You see, this thing, it is not pocket portable. At three-and-a-half pounds, it's about the size and the weight of an encyclopedia Britannica. It's not 28 pounds like that original tape recorder, but three-and-a-half pounds is no iPod. So Ibuka calls up his engineers and issues them a challenge. Make me a cassette player that is ultra portable. I want something that fits in my one hand, that I can slip into my briefcase, that's simple to use, elegant even,

and it's built to do just one thing. Play music on the go. Well, that's when they dust off the design of that tape recorder, the one that the Apollo astronauts had taken to the moon. They removed the speaker and the recording function, and they stripped down the device all the way to focus on One thing, and one thing only. Play high-quality music in the smallest package possible.

This might be the first product we've covered that's actually just a scaled-back version of something that already exists. Usually, innovation means adding more, more features, more buttons, more bells and whistles. But here, Jack, the genius is in the subtraction. This new machine is minimalist in its approach. All you do is slot in your Eagles' greatest hits tape, hit play, and then boom, you're immediately taking it easy. But remember how we said they removed the speaker for this new device? How are you going to hear the thing? Looks like there's one vital part left to add. The headphones. At this time,

the late 1970s, the headphones that exist in the world are enormous. They actually look like Princess Leia's hairdo. Now, no one, we mean no one, walks around outside with headphones on. Because until the Walkman, headphones were designed to be worn sitting still in a professional music studio like Simon and Garfunkel. They weren't meant to be used on the go. So the Sony engineers come up with a lightweight design, a headband with two orange foam pads that sit on each ear.

And that color, orange, is important. Now, with the player and the headphones combined, this new project starts to come together as a little machine, no bigger than a paperback book, and it lets you take your music anywhere. The prototype is ready by February 1979, and Ibuka,

he's into it. So is Borita. So they set up an intense deadline. Launched this new creation by June, so it's ready by the time school that's out. And Jack, they also set the price. And like we like to say, the price is a signal. So it's $150, or about $660 in today's money. Now, at first, that does sound like a lot, yeties. Until you consider this. In the original iPod, it cost you $399 when it launched in 2001, which is over $700 today. Jack and I like to call this the early adopter tax, because when you get version one of any new technology, it's going to be very pricing. Early adopters are the tech

fanatics who are so eager to try the newest, greatest thing, they've got a higher willingness to pay. And the company's making that innovative tech. They need every dollar they can get before economy is a scale kick in. And then there's the little question of what to call it. Internally, someone floated Walkman as a nod to their earlier portable recorder, the press man, but not everyone is sold on the Walkman. So then a bunch of other names get tossed around, soundabout, the stowaway, the freestyle. Even the Sony disco jogger. Jack, I was thinking tape daddy may work, but some of Sony's executives in the U.S. and Europe, they just beg them to change it. They think that Walkman, it sounds like mangled English. It's not going to work. But Morita

liked that Walkman felt unique, in some ways strategically awkward. The oddness made the name stick in people's heads. Once he heard it, he wouldn't budge. Walkman is clear enough to be understandable, but curious enough to be memorable. But when the Walkman first hits stores in Japan, it barely makes a sound. In the first month, it only sells around 3,000 units. The problem with that first Walkman isn't the name, but it's the concept. It's just too new. Retailers don't even know what shelf to put on. Is this a radio or a recorder, a weird toy? The Walkman is simply too different at first, and nobody knows what to make of it. But Sony is not giving it. because they're about to make a move

that changes everything. A jogger in Central Park pounds the pavement to the beat of Blondie in his ears. Half a world away, a businessman on a Tokyo commuter train sways in his suit as he zones out to Vivaldi. Over in Venice Beach, an aerobics instructor counts down three, two, one,

and then tells everyone in her class to hit play as she's leading a synchronized workout to La Freak by Sheik. Across continents and across time zones on bike, subways, treadmills, and skateboards, people are tuning in and bibin out. A factory worker in Liverpool, a student and soul, a flight attendant on a layover in Paris, all with the same orange foamed headphones pressed to their ears, and all carrying a tiny blue and silver machine clipped to their belt or stashed in their backpack.

This is the Sony Walkman. You slide in the cassette, Push play, the tape rolls. And suddenly, the noise of the world fades. You're no longer on a crowded bus or stuffy classroom. You're living in your own movie, and you get to pick the soundtrack. Sony's gamble has paid awe. That strange little box Ibuka wanted so we could listen to the marriage of Figaro at 30,000 feet, it has become global.

And like the Rubik's Cubes, MTV, and Jane Fonda workout videos, this thing is helping the find a decade. After that disappointing initial launch in Japan, Sony hits the streets to do some in-person demos. Because their working theory isn't that the product is bad. It's just so revolutionary, people won't know how much they want it until they try it. Strangers start passing the Walkman around, marveling at the sound quality, the portability,

and the idea that music could be private. Oh, and the orange headphones? Yeah, that staggs even more attention, literally catching your eye. It says Sony, without Sony, saying, Sony. The first 30,000 units sell out in Japan by the end of the summer, 1979. Then it's time to go global. The Walkman launches in the U.S. in June of 1980, and sales explode. We're talking 50,000 units in just two months. Sony's revenues jump 41% in a year. Those are beanie baby

numbers right there. Celebrs get on board, and not just the techie ones. Artist Andy Warhol marvels at the Walkman. Singer Donna Summers gets one, and Paul Simon, too. and then a meeting that will change how we listen to music forever. When Steve Jobs pays a visit to Sony headquarters over in Tokyo, Marita personally hands him a walkman. Steve takes it home and get this, he takes it apart. Steve Jobs is so shocked by the unprecedented power in this tiny box, he just has to know how it works.

Steve also blitzes Marita with a bunch of questions. When Marita tells Steve that he personally, oversees every aspect of design, Steve realizes that great products aren't just about engineering. They're about obsession, someone grinding over every detail, from the circuit board to the case design to the feel of the buttons. That philosophy, that's going to become one of the guiding principles at Apple. But ironically, it's going to come back to bite Sony. But that's decades away, Nick. Right now, it's the early 80s, and the Walkman has more swagger than Keith Richards at Wembley. It's so popular, it even changes the format people use to listen to music.

In 1978, tapes had an 11% market share compared to vinyl's 66%. But just six years later, by 1984, cassettes outsell vinyl for the first time ever. The format that once seemed like a niche oddity is now the dominant way people consume music. And Jack, what's driving the change over to cassettes? Mix tapes. Yeah. Cassette tapes are. They're not just canvases for your music.

They're listenable on the go thanks to the Walkman. Vinals aren't. People make mixtapes for everything. From party tapes and road trip soundtracks to break-up tapes and mixes to woo your crush. The cassette, it becomes a canvas. You know what? John Cusack explained it best in the movie High Fidelity. Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art, many do's and don'ts.

You've got to kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you've got to take it up a notch. Then you've got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Mix tapes are so disruptive, the record industry starts panicking. You've got record labels slapping stickers on albums that say things like home taping is killing music. But consumers don't care.

They've got the power now, thanks to the Walkman and these tape players. I mean, Jack, is this reminding you of the early 2000s when record companies were losing it over MP3. downloads with Napster. The record labels adapt, eventually, but not before fighting a losing battle against a future that's already here. Add it all up, and Sony helped create a new format, a new way of listening, and a new way of sharing music all with one product, The Walkman. They are at the top of their game, Shirley, Jack, surely nothing can go wrong, right? It's your man, Nick Cannon, and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon,

at night. I've heard y'all been needing some advice in the love department. So who better to help than yours truly? Now, I'm serious. Every week, I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the business to answer your most intimate relationship questions. Having problems with your man? We got you. Catching feelings for your sneaky link? Let's make sure it's the real deal first. Ready to bring toys into the bedroom? Let's talk about it. Consider this a non-judgment zone to ask your questions when it comes to sex and modern dating in relationships. friendships, situationships, and everything in between. It's going to be sexy, freaky, messy, and you know what? You'll just have to watch this show. So don't be shy. Join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. Want to watch episodes early and ad-free?

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Listen to Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. By 1984, the Walkman. has gone platinum. In just a year and a half, 10 million units have sold. It is a certified smash hit. Sony's sales jumped by 14% that year, mostly due to the Walkman.

But Jack, they're not done yet. In fact, Sony has got a brand new format on deck. It's shiny, it's disc shape, and oh, it is coming for your record collection. Sony has teamed up again with Phillips, This time to develop their new compact disc format or CD. CDs are smaller, they're more durable, and because they're digital, they can hold more music with crystal clear sound. CDs launch in 1982, and Sony's own portable CD player, the Discman, follows in 1984.

By 1988, CD sales eclips vinyl, and in 1991, they overtake cassettes. Sony, they are riding the digital wave they helped create. Sony has helped create not one but two new music formats and not one new way of listening to music on the move, two with the Walkman and the Discman. So Sony has created new products and new habits. And Sony, they double down on these discs. They're simply a superior technology.

In fact, Sony helps launch other disc formats too, like DVDs for movies and mini-discs for music. They even buy a record label. In 1987, Sony shels out $2 billion for CBS Records. At the time, the world's biggest and most successful record company. Now, Sony owns the catalog to Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, and yes, even Bab Streisand herself. This deal means that Sony has control over the format, over the device, and over the music itself. So heading into the digital age, it looks like Sony is in prime.

They're worth over $10 billion, and they're one of the world's biggest electronics companies. They've got the tech, the experience, and the music catalog. They basically invented modern portable music. How could they possibly fumble this? It's the early 2000s. You're hunched over the family's one desktop computer in that random room next to the dining room. You've got LimeWire or Napster running in the background, and you're one download away from giving your computer a virus

just to snag bittersweet symphony. You're building playlist called Chill Out Vives and Breakup Songs Volume 3, even though you're only 13. But here's the thing. You're not burning those songs onto CDs anymore. You're syncing them straight to your digital music player. And it's not a Walkman made by Sony. It's an iPod made by Apple.

This should have been Sony's moment. The company that put music in your pocket and headphones on your ears, by all accounts, should have owned the digital music revolution, aka the MP3. Sony's been making audio equipment since the 1940s, and they have 20 years' experience making portable music players. They even own a record label. If ever a company was in a position to leap ahead and snap up this new market of online tunes, it's Sony.

In fact, get this. Sony releases its first MP3 player in 19. 1999, an entire two years before the Apple iPod. You're kidding. That's right. Sony beat Apple to it, and they call it the memory stick Walkman. That's a tough one. But it's not the clunky name that cost them.

They actually changed the name pretty quickly to network Walkman, which to be honest isn't much better. Sony makes a critical error and forces users to convert their music into a proprietary Sony-only file format called A-Track, all because they are afraid of piracy hurting their records label business. And surprise, no one wants to convert their tunes. That's friction right there, Jack. And friction, that's the great enemy of tech. It's simply too much to ask consumers to go through all the hoops like that.

Meanwhile, Apple is paying close attention. In 2001, Steve Jobs, the guy who took a part of Walkman just to see how it worked, launches the iPod. Steve was struck by how Sony's leadership personally obsessed over design and user experience. And you know what? He took that same ethos and applied it to the iPod, making it sleek, simple, delightful to use the same principles as Sony. The result? A device that feels like the spiritual successor to the Walkman, but built for the digital age.

The iPod plays MP3s, it syncs with iTunes, and like the Walkman. men before it, everybody wants one. Mom, please! Crucially, Nick, Apple didn't have a record label. So if pirating music went wild, that's not Apple's problem. No, and the iPod? It crushes it. While Apple made it as easy as possible to listen to MP3 music,

Sony was too busy trying to stop people from stealing songs. This has got to be one of the biggest business misses we have ever covered. Facing the innovator's dilemma, Sony chose to defend their record label rather than go on the offense towards digital music. And within eight years of launching, Apple is selling over 200 million iPods. Basically, the iPod did to the Walkman

what the Walkman did to vinyl. Though you could argue, and we do, that it was the Walkman that made the iPod possible. But not all is lost. Because while Sony fumbles music, they quietly rewrite the rules of gaming. In 1994, Sony launches the PlayStation and quickly disrupts video gaming. Nintendo and Sega, they've dominated the space for a decade.

But Sony's PlayStation, with the slick graphics and its CD-based format, that makes gaming feel cinematic and makes it go mainstream. Thanks to Sony, you're not blown into that game cartridge anymore. And as downloading MP3s gave way to Spotify and the streaming era, Sony is already positioned to thrive. Because while they stumbled with hardware, they'd been quietly building a music empire off that CBS record label purchase. And with an artist roster that boasts Beyoncé, The Beatles, Kendrick Lamar, and Michael Jackson, Sony pulls in more than $5 billion a year from streaming rights alone. Sony is now the biggest music publisher on Earth.

And the revenues their record label makes from streaming is a third of Spotify's total revenue. And that's just one division within all of Sony. Even if Sony lost the portable music player war, they still ended up winning by owning the music itself. And if Abuka and Morita were still alive today, that would be music to their ears. Crisp, clear, portable music. Nick, what's your takeaway on this story of The Walkman? Subtraction can be a superpower. The Walkman didn't add more features.

It took them away. No record button, no speaker, just a sleek, focused machine that did one thing beautifully. Play music on the move. The tech had been around for a decade and there was a definite unrealized demand for a portable music player.

But it took subtraction from a bulky tape recording device in order to unlock it. The original iPod did the same thing. One click wheel with one purpose. Even the original Google homepage stripped everything away but a single search box, which consumers clearly prefer

to MSN and Yahoo's very busy sensory overload homepages. Jack, sometimes innovation isn't about doing more, it's about doing less, just with more focus. Subtraction can be addition. But Jack, what about you? What's your takeaway?

Sometimes you need graphs, other times you need guts. Sometimes it's the information, other times it's the intuition. Nick, Sony invented the Walkman without a single, focus group. Why? Because one of the co-founders, Masaru Ibuka, wanted a device like it for himself to listen to music on an airplane. Early tests showed that people were confused by the product.

Why would anybody buy a tape player that only played music and didn't record? But Abuka pushed ahead nonetheless. He famously said, don't worry, this isn't a product you explain. This is a product you try. I guess there's no universal rule for when to follow the data or when to trust your instincts, but the Walkman is the perfect example of innovation born from personal curiosity, not from market research. The Walkman is a gut product, not a graph product. All right, before we go, it's time for our absolute favorite part of the show, the best facts yet. These are the hero stats, the facts, and the surprises we discovered in our research, but we just couldn't squeeze into the story. Nick kick us off, let a rip. All right, here we go, man.

Now, this one was a personal interest to me because there were over 300 different versions of the Walkman released, but there was also a limited edition silver-plated model made in partnership with the jeweler Tiffany and co, which marked the Walkman's 10th anniversary in 1989. They probably had one cassette built-in Breakfast of Tiffany's. Oh, absolutely preloaded Jack. Here's my favorite fact, Nick. The original Walkman had a surprising social twist. Two headphone jacks. So you could listen to music with a friend at the same time. But here's the kicker. If you wanted to chat with your partner, midsong, just hit the built-in hotline button. It would mute the volume and activate a tiny

microphone that was built in so you could talk without ever taking your headphones off. Oh, what's that you say? Sorry, I couldn't hear you over my 80s power ballads mixed tape. Because nothing says friendship like tangling your headphone cables together and chit-chatting over total eclipse of the heart. And that, my friends, is why the Sony Walk Band is the best idea yet. Coming up on the next episode of The Best Idea Yet, the show that launched the careers of Tina Faye, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, and more Cowbell. It's Saturday Night Live, TBI-Y style. If you have a product you're obsessed with.

But wishing you the backstory, drop us a comment, and we will dive into it. Oh, and don't forget to rate and review the podcast. Five stars, that helps us grow the show. The best idea yet is a production. of Wondery, hosted by me, Nick Martel, and me, Jack Kravici Kramer. Our senior producers are Matt Beagle and Chris Gautier. Peter Arcuni is our additional senior producer. Our senior managing producer is Callum Ploos, and Jake Kleimberg is our managing producer.

This episode was written and produced by Adam Skeuse. Production and Research by H. Conley. We use many sources in our research, including the book Sony by John Nathan and the official Sony history from the company's website. Sound design and mixing by Kelly Cromerick. Fact-checking by Erica Janick. Music supervision by Scott Velazquez and Jolina Garcia for Frieson Sink. Our theme song is Got That Feeling Again by Blackalack.

Executive producers for Nick and Jack Studios are me, Nick Martel, and me, Jack Kravici Kramer. Executive producers for Wondery are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Erin O'Flaherty, and Marshall Lue. Follow the best idea yet on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of the best idea yet early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.