Why Sony Can't Bring Back Its Classic Walkman Models

MP3s have been on the way out for a long time, being replaced by music subscriptions. And "MP3 player" is a feature of other devices, not its own device. Both my Apple Watch and Garmin watch can store and play MP3s without a phone; both also support music subscriptions.

The only market is in the "enthusiast audiophile flac player thing that costs way too much", just like it is currently for vinyls and DVD players.

There's an irony here, because Sony do make MP3 Walkmans based on Android: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/c/walkman-digital-recorde...

The iPod was a product in an interesting time... if you ignore the screen, a modern mp3 player could be made as small as a SD card... as soon as you add the screen, you need a full operating system to manage files and run the screen. Nobody wants to put the effort into something that's going to be as basic as a mp3 player.

> But then why Nike/Adidas/Quicksilver/etc cannot bring back clothes from the 90s?

They can, but people wouldn't want to pay the price. When adjusting for inflation, clothes today are much cheaper than 30 years ago, and the main producers of high-quality cotton (Kazakhstan and Egypt) are having continuous drought problems so the best raw material is even more expensive.

The combination of customer expectation for low prices, and more expensive raw materials, exacerbated by lower production volume, means that very few would be willing to buy. As an example, take a look at the high quality jeans market: there are a few niche companies in Japan, Europe, US and Canada producing jeans at the same level of quality as 50-100 years ago, in some cases the exact same model as, say, a 1950's Levi's. Those jeans start at $200 per pair, but go even up to $400-500 and the manufacturers are barely surviving.

Clothes made in the 90s used different materials and stitching than they do today, and likely cost more to produce. They'd probably need old machines they haven't had in decades.

Have you tried dry cleaning?

Great question!

Everything has been optimized towards giving a small number of companies total control and surveillance over our media. That means forcing people to store their files on someone else's servers. Those companies don't really care about making better technology for others to use. Fewer options for the public, lack of innovation, and the increasing enshittification of everything is a price they are willing to pay for control, lock-in, and rent seeking.

>until maybe hipsters revive that too like they have with tapes?

That is already happening. I like to frequent Vintage Computer Festival and for the last few years a few of them have had MD-Con as part of a convention within a convention. A whole room dedicated to MiniDisc tech showing off laptops, desktops, camcorders, pro-hifi gear, etc. There is a collector that even brings a large portion of his collection which is all in blue including rare blue color minidiscs themselves from company promo's. One example is a promo MD from Boss Coffee in japan which looked fantastic.

There is even a revival in the software used to burn/format minidiscs since most of the original software is ancient now.

Its pretty fun to visit them as someone who used a minidisc player through highschool and college until I got the original Microsoft Zune. A lot of the people I met at the last two MD-Con's loved looking through all the models presented at the con to try and find the same device they back in the day.

https://www.mdcon.live/

Maxell cassette players are not cassette players from back in the day, but cheap stuff like everything else: https://youtu.be/6XyaBls8jyg?is=Lrgqe23yWlelBvl-

> When I hear Walkman I only think of cassette tape

Same here.

I was just recently wondering if there were any places that sell Walkman's still. I remember walking around Seoul and ended up in a maze of closet sized electronic and nick-nack shops with some really random old parts and gadgets. Made me miss my old boombox. Thought that would be a good place to go back and look for a walkman, but the Maxell MXCP-P100 – wireless cassette player looks perfect

You're many years late to the MiniDisc revival.