13

In the movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, there's a scene where the students are preparing for the Yule Ball.

Professor McGonagall is instructing the boys and girls, while Filch is choosing a vinyl record to place in an enormous turntable phonograph with a horn as big as Hagrid.

This has me wondering if the wizarding world, in general, plays vinyl records. Or, if this was just a Muggle artifact that Hogwarts kept as a novelty.

Are there other instances of witches or wizards using or owning phonographs or record players in either the books or movies? If so, what are they? (Examples help to illustrate if this was a one-off or a trend)

3
  • good find on record players, its weird that had one at the yule ball since they had a live band
    – Himarm
    Jan 17, 2016 at 3:02
  • @Himarm That's exactly why I'm wondering!
    – user31178
    Jan 17, 2016 at 3:02
  • Because anyone over 40 is really getting back into vinyl in a big way.
    – DA.
    Jan 17, 2016 at 18:41

2 Answers 2

19

Yes.

When Harry’s trying to get the memory from Slughorn in Half-Blood Prince, we get this mention of a gramophone in Slughorn’s office:

Twice, Harry had gone to his office and knocked, but received no reply, though on the second occasion he was sure he had heard the quickly stifled sounds of an old gramophone.

Half-Blood Prince, chapter 21 (The Unknowable Room)

This seems like how they’d play recorded music in the magical world – or at least at Hogwarts – as anything more electronic is going to fall over from all the magic in the air. It fits in with the older technology that we generally see in use.

7

This is not a new occurrence in the movies as we see here.

Here we see Lupin using a record playing in his class, in movie 3.

I'd hazard to guess that records are something that wizards use, it fits in the very old tech category along with the cameras, and radios. And since they have famous wizarding bands it makes sense to be able to listen to their music whenever.

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