The compact disc, written off for years as a relic of the pre-streaming era, is now the single fastest-growing format in the RIAA’s ledger. CD volume climbed 45.7% to 17.5 million units in the first half of 2026, according to RIAA data cited by ecoustics.com, while wholesale CD revenue jumped to $171.1 million from $107.9 million a year earlier. That’s a bigger percentage gain than vinyl posted, though vinyl remains by far the larger physical business in dollar terms.
Total physical recorded-music revenue reached $731.5 million for the half, up 25.9% from $581.2 million a year earlier.
The Numbers, Side by Side
Vinyl still moves more dollars than CDs, but CDs are closing the growth gap fast.
| Format | 1H 2026 Revenue | Revenue Change |
|---|---|---|
| CD | $171.1M | +58.6% |
| Vinyl | $543.8M | +17.7% |
| Other Physical | $16.5M | +44.9% |
| Total Physical | $731.5M | +25.9% |
Those figures come from the RIAA’s own mid-year comparison table, which also quietly revised its 2025 baseline: last year’s report had listed 11.7 million CDs and $108.1 million in CD revenue for the first half of 2025, while the current comparison uses 12.0 million units and $107.9 million as the starting point, ecoustics.com noted. The RIAA adopted a wholesale-value-net-of-returns methodology to align its reporting with international standards, and historical tables get revised as that methodology evolves.
Two Datasets, Two Different Questions
Readers chasing the CD story will run into a second number: Luminate, the data firm, reported Americans bought 16.3 million CDs in the first half of 2026, a figure ecoustics.com cited from its own earlier reporting alongside the RIAA’s 17.5 million units. The two totals aren’t measuring the same thing, and treating them as competing counts misses the point.
Luminate tracks consumer purchases through retailer and reporting-partner data, plus its own modeling — useful for understanding what fans are actually buying and, per ecoustics.com’s earlier coverage, how genres like K-pop skew the retail numbers. The RIAA instead reports wholesale revenue reported by record labels, net of returns. Both point toward the same broader development,
ecoustics.com’s analysis found: physical music strengthened in the first half of 2026, and CDs delivered the biggest surprise among major formats.
What the RIAA’s Own Numbers Don’t Capture
None of the RIAA’s revenue figures reflect used CDs changing hands at record shops, on Discogs, on eBay or at flea markets. A secondhand sale doesn’t generate a new wholesale transaction for a label, so it never enters the RIAA dataset, according to ecoustics.com’s reporting. The 17.5 million units the RIAA counted are new commercial product moving through label channels — not the far larger pool of discs already in circulation among collectors.
That distinction matters for anyone trying to gauge how deep the CD revival actually runs. The secondary market may be riding the same wave of interest in owning physical music, but the RIAA’s figures simply don’t measure it, leaving that scale of activity unverified by either source.
RIAA’s Matt Bass on a “Diversified Marketplace”
RIAA VP of Research Matt Bass framed the half-year results as evidence of stability across formats rather than a single format’s triumph.
That framing lines up with the broader numbers: streaming still accounts for roughly four out of every five dollars the RIAA tracked, even as CDs posted the sharpest percentage growth of any format.
Vinyl’s Runway Compared With the CD Spike
What neither source resolves is how much of the CD jump reflects genuinely new listeners buying physical media for the first time versus existing collectors expanding what they already own. Nobody, per ecoustics.com’s own caution, should read the numbers as evidence that CDs are overtaking vinyl or that streaming subscribers are abandoning their apps for a stack of jewel cases. The RIAA’s next full-year report, whenever it lands, will show whether the first half’s CD surge held through the back half of 2026 or proved to be a shorter-lived spike.