More people are purchasing physical music in our increasingly digital age, according to a new report from RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America.
Against a backdrop of 4.7% growth in streaming revenue and 6.4% growth in paid subscriptions, RIAA clocks a staggering 58.6% increase in CD sales and a 17.7% jump in vinyl record sales for the first half of 2026. Collectively, US music revenue is up 6.9% "and outpacing US inflation."
Streaming is, of course, the majority of the market – a full 82% of total recorded revenue. However, "double-digit growth in vinyl, CDs and sync licensing underscores the breadth of ways artists connect with fans in an increasingly varied and dynamic market," RIAA reckons.
This marked rise in disc sales, dovetailing with a longer vinyl boom, comes as the games industry – far across the pond and more global than just US music – grapples with the potential death of physical media altogether, largely sparked by PlayStation ending disc support as of January 2028.
A previous report from Luminate noted that a rise in CD sales had partly been driven by huge K-pop albums. Even accounting for this outlier, broader findings indicated that "that the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible," with a non-trivial chunk of buyers lacking a way to actually play the CDs they're buying.
"This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself," Luminate said.
Music and game discs are apples and oranges in many comparisons, but there's great overlap in the root appeal of physical media in both industries, and in the reality of the digital split.
Just as most game revenue is digital, most of the music industry is streaming – yet when supported, the enthusiast physical market can not only give fans a real sense of ownership, it can also create new ways for creators to reach more fans and find a presence beyond a product in their lives. And for those fans, a disc in your hands guarantees access to the media you love, whereas digital purchases can be revoked.
