The Walkman used to be the perfect companion for whole generation of music lovers, and now the clunky portable cassette player by Sony has been named the best musical invention of the last 50 years, by a leading magazine.

Sony's music player has even beaten the Dolby sound, compact discs, and the ubiquitous iPod to top the list of ‘ten most important musical innovations of the last 50 years’, published by T3 magazine.

The Walkman’s victory has comes in the same week in which it has 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 as it went on to become one of the world's first truly global gadgets.

"It changed the way we access music, changed how often we could access music, and changed a generation,” the Telegraph quoted Kat Hanniford at T3 as saying.

The MP3 digital music format came in second, while the iPod music player was placed at the third spot on the list.

The Compact Disc was ranked fourth, followed by Napster, the ground-breaking illegal file-sharing site, at the fifth position.

T3's list of Top Most Important Musical Innovations of the last 50 years:

1. Sony Walkman

2. MP3 format

3. Apple iPod 1st Generation

4. CD

5. Napster

6. Dolby

7. DAB radio

8. Boombox

9. Sonos Multi-Room Music System

10. Panasonic Technics DJ deck