Sony has finally decided to stop producing their once revolutionary cassette player. What, you thought it was already dead; me too. But the official word has just come down. "Sony has sold 220 million cassette Walkman players globally since the product's July 1979 debut that changed lifestyles by popularising music on the go." Except, I was expecting to hear that the portable CD player had also been retired. It seems cassettes have been dead for a good three years.
Sure, stores keep selling CDs but with the number of digital devices in the market place, is anyone using a portable CD player? CDs first appeared only a few years after cassette players; In the late 80's they appeared as options for cars. You would suspect that within the decade, CDs will stop being produced and all music will be sold as digital downloads. We are watching a migration from physical media to digital to eventually cloud. We will no longer physically hold onto something but access everything from the network. It is the direction we are headed or all media as we demand what we want, where we want, when we want, how we want.
