Provided is a recording or playback apparatus capable of separating a musical piece from an audio including the musical piece and a speech through a simple arithmetic process. A cut point detector detects, as a cut point, a time point at which an audio signal level or an amount of change in the audio signal level is not lower than a predetermined value. A frequency characteristic amount calculator calculates a characteristic amount in a frequency area of the audio signal only at each cut point and in its proximity. A cut point judging unit judges an attribute of the cut point on a basis of the calculated characteristic amount of the frequency. A music section detector detects a start and end points of each music section on a basis of the attribute and an interval between sampling points.