Phonon was originally created to allow KDE and Qt software to be independent of any single multimedia framework such as GStreamer or xine and to provide a stable API for a major version's lifetime.

It was done for various reasons: to create a simple KDE/Qt style multimedia API, to better support native multimedia frameworks on Windows and macOS, and to fix problems of frameworks becoming unmaintained or having API or ABI instability.

For example, a file can be played in four lines of C++ code,[3] compared to 30 lines in the old audio framework for KDE (aRts)[4] Phonon is not designed to have every conceivable multimedia feature, but rather as a simple way to perform common functions of computer media players.

[4] The idea behind Phonon started at aKademy 2004 in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart (Germany), where a new multimedia API had to be chosen to replace aRts.

The earliest version was called KDEMM (KDE MultiMedia) and was only supported by JuK and Amarok.