Source:http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade00.html
Leisure time during the first decade of the twentieth century was spent at family get-togethers, baseball, picnics, long Sunday drives in the horse and carriage (or the new family car). In the evenings families gathered around the piano for a sing-along. Sheet music to popular songs sold over a million copies. Song pluggers carried pianos on their horse-drawn carts and performed for crowds who bought this music from these vendors or dime stores. Barbershop Quartets harmonized on Saturday nights. Sweet Adeline was one of the most popular songs of the decade. Nickelodeon was new hottest rage beginning in 1905. The films were often naughty and men frequented these penny arcades. Nickel arcades came along soon where you paid a nickel to enjoy a short moving picture projected onto a screen. These were enormously popular. There were 10,000 in operation within 3 years.
Music reflected the events changing in the world outside. In My Merry Oldsmobile, Come Josephine in My Flying Machine, and Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis announced the changes brought about by automobiles and airplanes. Songs like Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home and The Darktown Strutters Ball echoed the racial prejudices of the period.
During this decade, radios brought music to the country and in 1903, the hand-cranked victrola went on the market and many Americans listened to recordings of opera stars. Broadway musicals flourished. Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan opened on Broadway. The Ziegfeld Follies (later, but still Ziegfeld) began in 1907. The waltz was replaced with ballroom dancing (Take time to watch the finale, too). And my favorite, the beer songs like Under the Anheuser Bush. Many memorable Vaudeville songs were performed at this time, including She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage . By the 1900s, Scott Joplin (Maple Leaf Rag) had made ragtime popular by bringing it out of the red-light district onto the legitimate stage. AND, don't forget the silent films.