CD gross sales have surged by 16 per cent within the US throughout the first half of 2026, considerably outpacing the expansion of vinyl.
The brand new figures had been revealed in leisure knowledge firm Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report, which discovered that 16.3million CDs had been offered throughout the nation between January and the tip of June.
By comparability, vinyl gross sales grew by a extra modest 2.4 per cent year-on-year. Nevertheless, information stay the extra common of the 2 codecs by way of items, with 21.8million vinyl albums offered throughout the identical interval. Round 205,000 cassettes had been additionally bought.
Mixed gross sales of CDs, information and cassettes elevated by 7.8 per cent to roughly 38.2million items throughout the first half of the 12 months.
Luminate attributed a lot of the speedy enhance in CD gross sales to “assortment constructing” and “value accessibility”, in addition to a powerful schedule of Ok-pop releases and the arrival of BTS’ vastly profitable comeback album ‘ARIRANG’.
The album offered 516,000 bodily copies within the US throughout its opening week, together with 208,000 vinyl copies – the largest weekly vinyl gross sales whole for a gaggle since Luminate started electronically monitoring purchases in 1991.
Ok-pop albums are sometimes offered in a number of variations with unique photocards, posters, books and different objects, encouraging followers to construct collections and buy a number of copies of the identical report.
Nevertheless, the rise was not solely pushed by BTS or the broader Ok-pop market. When all Ok-pop gross sales had been faraway from the information, US CD purchases had been nonetheless up by 6.7 per cent in contrast with the primary half of 2025.
The findings recommend that youthful followers are more and more treating CDs as inexpensive merchandise and collectable objects quite than merely a manner of listening to music.
Roughly half of the Gen Z and millennial customers shopping for CDs don’t personal a CD participant, in line with the report.
The bodily resurgence is going down alongside continued streaming progress quite than changing digital listening. US on-demand audio streams rose by 4.8 per cent to 732.7billion throughout the opening half of the 12 months, whereas international streams elevated by 9.8 per cent to 2.8trillion.
Earlier this 12 months, Harry Types’ ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Often’ was revealed because the UK’s biggest-selling vinyl album of 2026 to date, shifting 69,000 copies by mid-April.
It was adopted by Olivia Dean’s ‘The Artwork Of Loving’, Gorillaz’ ‘The Mountain’, the Struggle Little one charity album ‘Assist(2)’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’.
RAYE’s ‘The place Is My Husband!’ topped the corresponding vinyl singles checklist, forward of Taylor Swift’s ‘The Destiny Of Ophelia’ and ‘Opalite’, and Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s ‘Rein Me In’.
Regardless of the continued progress in music consumption, questions stay over how a lot of the business’s elevated income reaches working artists.
The Musicians’ Union continues to quote findings from the UK Musicians’ Census displaying that the common annual revenue from music work is £20,700, whereas 43 per cent {of professional} musicians earn lower than £14,000 a 12 months from music.
