Cloth bag, grey, marked ‘Sony MD Walkman’, with pull-cord closure, for Sony ‘MD Walkman’ portable minidisc recorder MZ-R55, Japan, introduced 1998

Announced by Sony in September 1992, the minidisc system was a new type of digital audio compression storage and was offered for sale in Japan in November 1992 and in Europe, Canada, the USA and other countries in December 1992. Offering listening and recording capabilities, minidiscs were popular in their home market of Japan and moderately successful in Europe but had limited success in competition against cassettes and later recordable CDs and eventually portable music devices such as iPods.