Sound Media considers how music recording, radio broadcasting and muzak influence people's daily lives and introduces the many and varied creative techniques that have developed in music and journalism throughout the twentieth century. Lars Nyre starts with the contemporary cultures of sound media, and works back to the archaic soundscapes of the 1870s.

The first part of the book devotes five chapters to contemporary digital media, and presents the internet, the personal computer, digital radio (news and talk) and various types of loudspeaker media (muzak, DJ-ing,...