This is the first Walkman and it celebrates 45 years since its launch: this is how portable music evolved

45 years ago the way we listen to music changed. It was on July 1, 1979 when the Japanese company Sony brought the first one to market Walkmanmaking the music accompany us at all times.

The first model is known as the TPS-L2. It was in the following two decades that it would achieve its worldwide fame, with the development of portable audio technology. It also laid the groundwork for the way we listen to music today.

This device worked with a cassette and allowed you to control the music with small buttons.

A report from the AVP website recalls how this device evolved from the cassette to the Discman. It was in the mid-1980s that this device was launched, which maintained the characteristics of the Walkman.

Both devices coexisted in the following years, although at first the Discman was more exclusive as it was a portable CD player, with digital sound quality, a term with which the new century would begin.

Following the legacy of the Walkman, the first MP3 players appeared, such as the Apple iPod, launched in 2001: now you can store thousands of songs in a compact and easy-to-carry device.

The report points out that today, Digital Audio Players (DAP) are the most advanced evolution of portable players. They are high-end devices with high-resolution formats such as FLAC, DSD and MQA.

But the evolution of portable music cannot ignore smartphones or other devices, where streaming services with a high capacity to store large music libraries such as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal can be counted on.