In the course of more than one hundred years of its existence, the sound recording became not only an important tool of ethnomusicological research, but also the factor of influence for the folk music. Forms of this relationship change together with the changes of the technical form of recording and reproduction and also with the changes of the attitude of society to these technologies. Roughly stated, there are three basic forms of relationship of folk music and sound recording. In the initial phase the sound recording - first on wax rolls - had been used for archivation of acoustic manifestations of folk music. Relatively early, however, folk music had been also spread and popularized by this means. This brought about also the influence of sound recording on mutual influencing of specific cultures and regions. The more and more accessible technologies of sound recording causes changes of the processes by which music is being passed down and taught. In the last decades, the sound recording had become also the means of music creation, a fact that manifests itself especially in various genres of contemporary electronic dance music.