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CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

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Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#21

Post by sublinear »

tangenter wrote: post #9

Personally, 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…

I think this is a bit more complicated than that. There's more music and video being made today than ever before and social media is how it gets distributed. Attentive time spent on streaming platforms is completely dwarfed by social media. If at all, people have something streaming in the background while they barely pay attention to it and instead focus on their phones.

This aligns with the broader historical trends of the internet creating deep niches. You have to take the good with the bad. We wouldn't even be discussing physical media at all without the internet being how it is. Despite there being a large audience for physical media, they're not the majority. The majority has moved on.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#22

Post by l72 »

Rooster61 wrote: post #4

While 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…

Agree with the siblings. I have hundreds of CDs in binders. They have lived in the unconditioned storage, very hot and humid attics, and on the floorboards of cars and for the most part, very few have any issues. It is quite incredible.

But storage is cheap so also rip it and burn an additional copy in case!

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#23

Post by l72 »

nubinetwork wrote: post #6
Rooster61 wrote: post #4

While 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...

Yeah burned discs wore out much earlier but it depended a lot on the brand. Fry’s great quality brand (or whatever it was called) did not last long. But my memorex and verbatim still work fine after 30 years of mistreatment!

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#24

Post by ColdStream »

About 10 years back I figured that this was coming. CDs are the best of both worlds. Near perfect audio quality, not too big physically, cannot have the rights revoked, no subscription fees but really easy to rip and put on your phone or whatever.

A few years back I saw some people buying collections of thousands of discs for maybe $100. Even if 10% of it was good, that was still a huge win. Those huge hauls are becoming rare now as they have been picked clean.

If only Minidisc had better audio quality, it would have REALLY been the perfect medium.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#25

Post by mrpippy »

tangenter wrote: post #9

Personally, 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…

For some reason, the PS4 and PS5 actually cannot play audio CDs

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#26

Post by justsomehnguy »

l72 wrote: post #16

A friend in his 40s had a 90s birthday party so I burned some mix CDs as party favors. Those CDrs were 20 years old and have been sitting in a hot, humid attic for the last 10+ years, but still recorded fine. The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! Also, I don’t think k3b or any of the other software i tried has been updated since 2005, but it all still worked great! Most importantly…

Hah!

Last year I bought a USB DVD RW drive just for the sake of it.

My 5.25" NEC 4xxx (with LightScribe) just quietly died in a PC used daily after around ~5 years of an extremely low usage. My only other ODD was in ThinkPad X301 and I had a feeling it would just die someday too most - and I would know it only when I would need read something.

So I just somewhat future-proofed myself a bit.

Number of discs I read on that drive is below 10 I think.

EDIT: oh, I helped out a friend to transfer some MRI records from a CDR with that drive. Somehow it was easier to send them from the other side of the country to a friend who would ask me to copy it and to send them back electronically.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#27

Post by [deleted] »

sublinear wrote: post #21
tangenter wrote: post #9

Personally, 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…

I think this is a bit more complicated than that. There's more music and video being made today than ever before and social media is how it gets distributed. Attentive time spent on streaming platforms is completely dwarfed by social media. If at all, people have something streaming in the background while they barely pay attention to it and instead focus on their phones. This aligns with the broader historical trend…

[deleted]

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#28

Post by dieselgate »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #26
l72 wrote: post #16

A friend in his 40s had a 90s birthday party so I burned some mix CDs as party favors. Those CDrs were 20 years old and have been sitting in a hot, humid attic for the last 10+ years, but still recorded fine. The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! Also, I don’t think k3b or any of the other software i tried has been updated since 2005, but it all still worked great! Most importantly…

Hah! Last year I bought a USB DVD RW drive just for the sake of it. My 5.25" NEC 4xxx (with LightScribe) just quietly died in a PC used daily after around ~5 years of an extremely low usage. My only other ODD was in ThinkPad X301 and I had a feeling it would just die someday too most - and I would know it only when I would need read something. So I just somewhat future-proofed myself a bit. Number of discs I read on…

I purchased a DVD player for the first time this past weekend.

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#29

Post by throw0101d »

l72 wrote: post #16

A friend in his 40s had a 90s birthday party so I burned some mix CDs as party favors. Those CDrs were 20 years old and have been sitting in a hot, humid attic for the last 10+ years, but still recorded fine. The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car! Also, I don’t think k3b or any of the other software i tried has been updated since 2005, but it all still worked great! Most importantly…

> The real problem was almost no one had a CD player not even in their car!

And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).

Re: CD sales growth outpaced vinyl in the first half of 2026

#30

Post by jedbrooke »

mrpippy wrote: post #25
tangenter wrote: post #9

Personally, 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…

For some reason, the PS4 and PS5 actually cannot play audio CDs

audio CDs use a different wavelength for the laser (infra red) while PS game disks are BluRay (blue laser).

Of course, 99.9% of other BluRay players will also support DVD/CD, so yeah it still does seem silly.

I also remember my Dad’s disappointment when he put a standard DVD in our Wii back in the day. Those are literally the same physical format as wii disks.

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