CD revenue up by nearly 60 per cent in first half of 2026

CD revenue in the US surged by nearly 60 per cent in the first half of 2026, according to a recent report.

• READ MORE: Why physical music media still matters in 2025

The Recording Industry Association Of America’s new mid-year report shows that compact disc revenue increased by 58.6 per cent during the first six months of the year, reaching $171million.

That’s up from approximately $108million over the same period in 2025, marking the biggest percentage increase of any category highlighted in the findings.

Over the summer, figures revealed that CD sales had surged by 16 per cent in the US during the first half of 2026. Luminate found that 16.3million CDs were sold across the country between January and the end of June.

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In comparison, vinyl sales grew by a more modest 2.4 per cent year-on-year.

However, records remain the more popular of the two formats in terms of units. The new RIAA report shows that vinyl generated $554million through the first six months of the year.

However, vinyl revenue grew by 17.7 per cent over that period – meaning that CDs outpaced it in terms of growth. Physical music revenue increased by 25.9 per cent overall.

Luminate noted in its earlier report that the combined sales of CDs, records and cassettes increased by 7.8 per cent to approximately 38.2million units during the first half of 202.

The data company attributed much of the rapid increase in CD sales to “collection building” and “price accessibility”, as well as a strong slate of K-pop releases and the arrival of BTS’ hugely successful comeback album ‘ARIRANG’.

But the increase was not solely driven by BTS or the wider K-pop market. When all K-pop sales were removed from the data, US CD purchases were still up by 6.7 per cent compared to the first half of 2025.

The RIAA and Luminate reports do not track the same thing, as Consequence notes. The latter looks at consumer sales, with the RIAA measuring wholesale revenue net of returns.

The physical resurgence is happening amid continued streaming growth, rather than replacing digital listening. US on-demand audio streams rose by 4.8 per cent to 732.7billion during the opening half of the year, while global streams increased by 9.8 per cent to 2.8trillion.

At the start of 2025, figures showed that music sales had hit their highest peak in 20 years – though it was said at the time that artists in the UK continued to earn far less than the average salary.

Earlier this year, Harry Styles’ ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ was crowned the UK’s biggest-selling vinyl album of 2026 so far, shifting 69,000 copies by mid-April.

The record was followed in the rundown by Olivia Dean’s ‘The Art Of Loving’, Gorillaz’ ‘The Mountain’, the War Child charity album ‘Help(2)’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’.

RAYE’s ‘Where Is My Husband!’ topped the corresponding vinyl singles list, ahead of Taylor Swift’s ‘The Fate Of Ophelia’ and ‘Opalite’, and Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s ‘Rein Me In’.

In 2023, NME published a feature exploring the “booming” physical music sales and the acts who enjoyed “bumper years” with the formats.