CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
consequence.net
CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
1–10 of 225 posts
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#2I have subscribed to Spotify since before 2012. I enjoyed finding new music and the convenience of listening to anything, whenever. My consumption habits are not very amenable to buying CDs, because I have no idea ahead of time which songs will "Hit" for me. I generally don't like "Artists" or "Genres" and I enjoy listening to wildly different music from day to day.
However, I have watched Spotify destroy my playlists regularly, and now it seems to happen more than once a year! Songs that they still have a license for and still have on their platform will be removed from your playlist and marked "Unavailable" because some licensing agreement change meant the actual file and unique ID in their system has changed, and they make zero effort to resolve the damage this regularly does to my library and playlists.
It makes staying on the spotify platform, the spotify "ecosystem" as it were, utterly worthless. No playlist you make today can be expected to be usable in the future. Any effort you put in to organize and find stuff is for naught.
Meanwhile, my shitty folder full of mp3 rips from sketchy sources from highschool has stayed with me, and works perfectly.
It's getting hard to justify now. None of the money I pay even goes to the people I listen to, because they are primarily niche and indie groups. Spotify seems to be doing this on purpose, and a close friend of people high up in Spotify is running a business to generate AI music so that spotify can fill up their generated playlists with slop that they don't have to pay anyone for, and which dilutes the rev share for real humans.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#3Good! As a vinyl collector, the price has gotten way too high. Let this help drive it down.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#4While I'm thrilled that kids are experiencing the thrill of buying physical media, I'm not sure CD's are the best way to go. Most of my CD's from my teenage years are no longer playable (partially due to poor upkeep, but some literally from disc rot). But hey, they'll learn the same lesson in a couple of decades haha.
I've personally been buying vinyl both because of the fact I missed out on the excitement myself growing up, and because I have some records that came out decades before I was born that play like the day they were minted. They've outlasted pretty much all of my CD's.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#5The Jumanji “What year is it” meme 100% applies here.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#6While I'm thrilled that kids are experiencing the thrill of buying physical media, I'm not sure CD's are the best way to go. Most of my CD's from my teenage years are no longer playable (partially due to poor upkeep, but some literally from disc rot). But hey, they'll learn the same lesson in a couple of decades haha. I've personally been buying vinyl both because of the fact I missed out on the excitement myself gro…
I've noticed that pressed discs work better than burned discs, but thats what backups are for... assuming you can get a working original that is...
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#7While I'm thrilled that kids are experiencing the thrill of buying physical media, I'm not sure CD's are the best way to go. Most of my CD's from my teenage years are no longer playable (partially due to poor upkeep, but some literally from disc rot). But hey, they'll learn the same lesson in a couple of decades haha. I've personally been buying vinyl both because of the fact I missed out on the excitement myself gro…
I have hundreds of CDs from the 80s and 90s, most of them bought used from charity shops. The vast majority play perfectly, despite some of them having obvious signs of poor storage/handling.
I think it's more likely your CD player is failing than your CDs.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#8I built a computer last year and made sure it had a blu-ray drive in it. There are very few cases that have built-in CD bays any more.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#9Personally, I haven’t stopped buying CDs or in certain cases DVDs and Blu-Rays - not of movies but of music. I find it interesting these “went away” but I can see why: nobody I know has a cd player to begin with. A lot of laptops nowadays don’t come with disc trays, and nobody buys a dvd bluray player. Yes, the PS or Xbox can play it but everyone just streams movies or music. So somewhere along the way it disappeared and I doubt it will genuinely come back. It’s a needless headache.
Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026
#10Good! As a vinyl collector, the price has gotten way too high. Let this help drive it down.
This won't affect the price of vinyl. Most CD buyers just don't want a bunch of lawyers ruining their collection as happens on the different services from time to time. Ripping a CD to mp3s and sticking them on a thumb drive is easier than with vinyl, but vinyl has its own tactile experience.
The types of nostalgia are not the same. Which is really unfortunate since I would also like more affordable vinyl records.