Neapolitan songs are known worldwide, but most of them became popular when the radio and record industries did not yet exist. The article hypothesises that this ‘unusual’ phenomenon can be connected to the many intersected actions of spreading and ‘drilling’ undertaken by ‘passionate’ listeners of Neapolitan songs and amateurs, who were engaged in ‘permanent creative activity, communication, community building, and content-production’. As is evident, this article refers to some studies about recent trends in media communication to explore better the Neapolitan communication system, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this way, it wishes to overcome the juxtaposition between ‘new’ and ‘old’ – the ‘dualistic form’ of many ‘short term investigations’ – and proposes to test social science models in different socio-historical contexts, by putting them into ‘the water of time’, to see if they float, if they can ‘keep afloat’ or if they ‘sink’.