A technology and its vicissitudes: playing the gramophone in Sweden 1903–1945

Abstract

This inquiry deals with the changing role of the technology and the use of phonographs and gramophones during the first half of the 20th century. Rather than looking at the UK or USA, which much previous research has done, the focus is on peripheral Sweden. More specifically the question is how phonography turned from being a scientific curiosity into becoming an everyday media technology, and how it thereby influenced culture and everyday musical communication. The findings show two distinct approaches to recorded music, which intermingle in today's unprecedented musicalisation of culture and everyday life around the globe – approaches respectively described as utilitarian and solipsistic.