| Late 19th century | PlayerPianos | Ragtime |
| Early 20th century | MechanicalRecording | Jazz |
| Mid 20th century | Better quality recording, better microphones | Cool jazz, crooners |
| Mid 20th century | Electric guitar | Rock'n'roll |
| Late-mid 20th century (the 60s) | More amplification, 4-track recording, early synthesizers | Rock, psychadelic rock |
| Early-late 20th century (the 70s) | more synths, cheaper recording studios | Diversifying, experimental rock |
| Mid-late-20th century (late 70s) | Cheaper recording studios and record manufacture, smaller and more portable amplification | Punk/ New Wave |
| Mid-late-20th century (late 70s) | Recording studios and technology cheap enough for the post-colonial world | Dub reggae |
| Mid-late-20th century (late 70s) | Twin-turntable and mixer with cross-fade | Disco |
| Mid-late-20th century (late 70s, early 80s) | Very cheap synthesizers and (especially) drum-machines | post-punk, new wave, early 80s synth-pop |
| Mid-late-20th century (late 70s, early 80s) | Direct-drive turntables to allow scratching | Early hip-hop |
| Late-late-20th century (mid-late 80s) | Sampling, cheaper synths and drum-machines, cheap PCs as sequencers, cheaper turntables and mixers | House, Techno |
| Late-late-20th century (mid-late 80s) | Early analogue synths (like TB303 bassline) become available on second-hand market | Acid House |
| Even later 20th century (late-80s, early 90s) | Home-computer sampler / sequencers (Atari and Amiga) | "cut-up" dance made with samples, Rave |
| Late-late 20th century | pitch-shifting software becomes available on home computers, allowing pitch and duration of music to be varied independently of each other | Jungle, D'n'B |
| Late-late 20th century | software models of analogues synthesizers and effects become available on home computers | Trance |
| Early 21st century | autotune, forment filtering, "liquid audio" | various AutoCroon vocal processing styles, glitch |