Sony’s music player has beaten Dolby sound, compact discs and the ubiquitous iPod to come top of the list of “ten most important musical innovations of the last 50 years” published by T3 magazine. Its victory comes in the week that the Walkman celebrated its 30th birthday. The first Walkman was the blue-and-silver model TPS-L2, which went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979 and started a musical revolution. Never before had consumers been able to listen to music as they walked down the street, without balancing a tape player on their shoulder.