What would it mean if the optimization of the capitalist system, through its competitive process and technological innovation, would have reached a point of extreme productivity caused profit, the lifeblood of capitalism, to dry up? The main question of music today is linked to the digitalization of the sound recording, and the dematerialization of the music merchandise, around the turn of the millennium. This research is dedicated to an analysis of the trajectory of the sound recording in the 20th century, through a short history of audio recording technologies and an analysis of three emblematic recordings of English-speaking popular musical cul-ture. The work crosses French economist Jacques Attali’s ideas that music can be a theoretical tool capable of anticipating future historical and social developments, and the ideas of German political theorist Robert Kurz, the main author of the Value Critiscism group. Privileging the point of view of musicians and audio profession-als, the investigation is set to check whether the field of music has traveled and reached the limits of a path foreseen by Marx, in the dynamics of competition and continuous increase of productivity as the axis of modern society. Also, whether the most striking musical manifestations of the 20th century, by exploring a sensi-tivity to the moment, to the instant, contributed to the formation of a neoliberal temporality and mentality. There was a democratization in listening and manipulat-ing sounds, musicians acquired autonomy, were able to value their own voice and learned how to manage themselves as producers at the same moment that the prod-uct of their labour lost form and value. In his process of emancipation, paradoxi-cally, the musician contributed to a new form of subjection.