Soviets Recorded Music on X-Rays

In the USSR, people recorded Western music onto discarded X-ray plates. Limited access to vinyl and recording equipment prompted a resourceful workaround for music lovers.

Starting in St. Petersburg, citizens obtained used X-rays from hospitals to create playable records. They adapted existing recording machines—some captured from Germany after World War II—to etch grooves into the X-ray material.

The practice spread to Moscow and other major cities across the Soviet Union. These homemade records, known as “bones” or “ribs” due to the skeletal images visible on the disc, circulated as a form of underground music sharing. The term “Roentgenizdat” mirrored “samizdat”—self-published literature—replacing “self” with the Russian root for X-ray, “Roentgen.”

The full extent of this practice and the number of X-ray records created remains unknown. Though a recent book and website document the phenomenon, the story relies on memories and surviving examples of this unique period in Soviet musical history.