CD sales in the US grew faster than vinyl in the first half of 2026, according to entertainment data company Luminate's Midyear Report, with CDs up 16 per cent compared with a 2.4 per cent rise for vinyl. The trend reflects a broader physical music revival driven partly by "collection building" and price accessibility, alongside a strong run of K-pop releases, though vinyl remains the more widely bought format overall.

Luminate recorded 16.3 million CD sales between January and June, against 21.8 million vinyl albums and around 205,000 cassettes, with combined physical sales up 7.8 per cent to roughly 38.2 million units. BTS's comeback album 'ARIRANG' was a major factor, selling 516,000 physical copies in its first week including 208,000 on vinyl, though CD sales still rose 6.7 per cent even excluding K-pop entirely. Luminate noted that around half of the Gen Z and millennial buyers of CDs do not own a CD player, suggesting many are collected as merchandise rather than played, while streaming also continued to grow, with US on-demand audio streams up 4.8 per cent and global streams up 9.8 per cent.