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The history of sound recording is one of the major chapters in contemporary music history, but it is also linked to other issues beyond music and has to be placed within the history of sensibilities. If recorded sound has such a large place today in our cultural universe, it is undoubtedly because its emergence at the end of the 19th century, far from being a purely technical and industrial phenomenon, testifies to an anthropological mutation of industrialized societies. One of its essential characteristics seems to be the change in the relation to time which is manifested both by the generalization of the clock but also by the birth of the scientific organization of work and its corollary, leisure time. The arrival and development of sound recording are part of this vast mutation that contributed to shaping 20th century musical sensibility.