page_title: Sony
section_title: Audio recording
hierarchical_section_title: Sony / Formats and technologies / Audio recording
caption_attribution_description: English: Sony Walkman TPS-L2 at "It's a Sony" Expo in Sony Building at Ginza, Chuo-Ku in Tokyo.
context_page_description: Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. The company owns the largest music entertainment business in the world, the largest video game console business and the second largest video game publishing business, and is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets, and a leading player in the film and television entertainment industry. Sony was ranked 97th on the 2018 Fortune Global 500 list.
  Sony is among the semiconductor sales leaders and as of 2015, the fifth-largest television manufacturer in the world by annual sales figures. It is the world's largest player in the premium TV market, a market for a television of at least 55 inches with a price higher than $2,500.
  Sony Corporation is the holding company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in businesses through its seven operating components: electronics, video games, motion pictures, music, semiconductors, financial services, and others.
context_section_description: Sony used the Compact Cassette format in many of its tape recorders and players, including the Walkman, the world's first portable music player. Sony introduced the MiniDisc format in 1992 as an alternative to Philips DCC or Digital Compact Cassette and as a successor to the Compact Cassette. Since the introduction of MiniDisc, Sony has attempted to promote its own audio compression technologies under the ATRAC brand, against the more widely used MP3. Until late 2004, Sony's Network Walkman line of digital portable music players did not support the MP3 standard natively.
  In 2004, Sony built upon the MiniDisc format by releasing Hi-MD. Hi-MD allows the playback and recording of audio on newly introduced 1 GB Hi-MD discs in addition to playback and recording on regular MiniDiscs. In addition to saving audio on the discs, Hi-MD allows the storage of computer files such as documents, videos and photos.
caption: First Sony Walkman TPS-L2 from 1979
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