MP3 Player Review Blog

The changes in portable music

The changes in portable music.

The ways in which we carry our personal music have changed considerably. Here is a brief history right through to today's mp3 players.

1972: Stereobelt

Andreas Pavel's Stereobelt was acknowledged by Sony as the world's first portable cassette player. At the time, however, no major seller was interested in manufacturing the device, setting the stage for the Walkman to take the 'First Portable Cassette Player That You Could Actually Buy' trophy.

1979: Walkman TPS-L2
The first Walkman cassette player, the TPS-L2, debuted in Japan on July 1.

1984: Discman D-50
Five years post-Walkman, Sony extended its portable line up in anticipation of CDs becoming the next hot music medium, which now seems really dated.

1991: MiniDisc
Sony introduced the MiniDisc as its own follow-up to the Discman. Despite its ultimate failure to be a success , the MiniDisc did plenty of damage as the first medium to represent a degradation in audio quality, rather than an improvement, over what came before it. Sony were telling us that portability mattered more than sound quality, and eighteen years later, the popularity of the tiny iPod nano and iPod shuffle proves that we believed it, and still do.

1998: MPMan F10

Getting closer to what we have today:
The Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 is often referred to as the world's first MP3 player, but in fact, that title belongs to the MPMan F10, distributed in the U.S. by Eiger Labs.

2001: Apple iPod (1st generation)
After Steve Jobs returned to Apple and the iMac changed the way people thought about personal computers (and Apple), the company extended that much-improved image to portable music players

2001: Samsung Uproar

The first music phone/

2007: Apple iPhone (1st generation)
Just when most competitors had caught up with Apple's signature scroll wheel style, Apple released another state of the art devise: The iPhone.

Before buying an<a onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/article_exit_link');" href=' http://www.moneysupermarket.com/c/shopping/bp/apple/audio-video-and-tv/mp3-players-and-media-players/ '>ipod >  it is worth weighing up the pro's and con's by comparing it with one of the portable mp3 players.

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