"Music on the move" ("a short history of portable audio devices") (audio)

[Mario500]

"Music on the move" ("a short history of portable audio devices") (audio)

Many of us remember the first portable music device we [ owned : ] a transistor radio, a boombox, a Walkman or perhaps an iPod. We might even recall the songs we played on it. But we might be less aware of how profoundly audio technology developments from the 1950s to 2000s changed the ways in which we consume music and other audio outside of the home or concert venue. Transistor radios allowed outdoor sounds and noises to mix and compete with those coming over the airwaves, creating new auditory experiences; the cassette player gave the listener a cheap way of making and re-making their own playlists; and the advent of digital music players encouraged us to ‘own’ music recordings without possessing a physical copy of the audio.

Iszi Lawrence discusses the history of portable music with Dr. Annie Jamieson, Curator of Sound Technologies at Bradford’s National Science and Media Museum; American drummer and writer Damon Krukowski; Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey, science historian and Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru, India; Karin Bijsterveld, Professor of Science, Technology and Modern Culture at Maastricht University; and World Service listeners.

(note: adding a colon symbol (":") immediately after the word "owned" in the making of the quotation directly above this note caused this imagery to appear: )

[Caroline13]

Now I think I "got it" and if I had been born 20 or so yrs later it would make faster sense. My generation didn't need music and then later TV stuff to do our fitness work. We were motivated and didn't need or want the gadgets that came....