In the era of streaming music, physical copies of the art form have taken a back seat in the past decade. However, CD revenue and consumer sales are making a resurgence, with the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) mid-year report showing a 58.6% increase in CD revenue for the first half of the year. It now sits at roughly $171 million, compared to $108 million in last year’s mid-year report, per Consequence.
Tracking by Luminate has also shown a 16% increase in CD sales. K-pop plays a significant part in this rise, with collectibles and various album variants commonplace, but even excluding the music genre, CD sales still increased by 6.7%.
When it comes to physical music, vinyls are still leading in terms of revenue, with $554 million in the first half of 2026. However, CDs are growing far more than vinyls, with vinyls only seeing a 17.7% increase in revenue and a 2.4% increase in sales.
Streaming is still the biggest money-maker, however. It accounted for $4.9 billion of the $6 billion in revenue from recorded music in the first half of the year (82%).
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