The History of Personal, Portable Music: Home Taping Is Never Not Killing Music

It's startling how much of the history of one of the most popular and groundbreaking gadgets of all time is still generally unknown, including lots of trivia that make the whole story so fun. Well, actually, given that I was -7 years old when the first Walkman (then called the Soundabout) was announced in 1979, maybe it's not all that surprising.

The story starts with how the Walkman came to be--one of Sony's cofounders loved listening to music over headphones while on the plane, but Sony's...