For a few years now, I’ve been writing about the surprising and durable increase in the rate of growth of revenues generated from what some refer to as “retro” physical media, as tracked by the Recording Industry Association of America. Now, the New York Times is noticing it as well. While streaming still remains the leading format, it is impossible to ignore the massive growth rates for physical media such as vinyl, CDs, and others.
Even the New York Times cited CD sales as a significant growth driver of recorded music revenue…
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has released its latest mid-year report for 2026 on the state of the music industry, and it remains a happy report indeed for music lovers everywhere. For the first half of 2026, recorded music revenues increased a respectable 7% or $400 million to a total of $6 billion. While revenues have grown every year for the last ten years, in 2025 the rate of growth looked as though it was plateauing. So this 7% industrywide jump in the first half is both welcome and a good indicator of a reigniting growth engine.
In reporting on this news, the New York Times led with this: “A resurgence in CD demand helped power a nearly 7% increase in U.S. recorded music revenue in the first half of 2026…”
Why Did The NY Times Point to CD Sales as Significant?
Why did the Times lead with a “retro” format like CD sales? Simple: because the CD category was the growth rate leader. CD sales grew by a whopping 58.6% to $171 million in the first half. And while those numbers are in the millions, not billions, that unexpected massive burst of consumer demand for the category has caught everyone in the music biz by surprise and is the buzz of the day.
Says the Times: “This jump underscores growing consumer interest in retro music formats, building on the revival of vinyl that has pushed more artists to release albums on the medium.”
Streaming Remains the Leader of the Pack
Of course, streaming, with a 56% share of all revenues, remains the leader of the pack, and there is good news there as well. Mid-year streaming revenue overall increased to $4.9 billion, a 4.7% increase compared to streaming revenues of $4.7 billion in mid-2025. Within the category, paid subscriptions (both premium and non-premium) increased 6.4% to $3.4 billion. Free streaming rose 3.7% to nearly $900 million.
So streaming saw mid-year growth of 4.7%, while physical media overall grew by a very robust 25.9%. The physical category includes vinyl, the category leader, which leapt 17.7% to mid-year revenues of more than one-half billion dollars ($544 million), the aforementioned CD segment with 58.6% growth to $171 million, and – wait for it – the cassette tape & other niche audio formats, which grew 73.4% in units (1.6 million units) and 44.9% in dollars ($16.5 million).
A Healthy, Diversified Marketplace
RIAA executive Matt Bass says that these results point to a “healthy, diversified marketplace.”
To learn more about the RIAA’s Mid-Year Report, be sure to visit riaa.com/2026-mid-year-music-industry-revenue-report.
This is so different from what the pundit Bob Lefsetz blares about in his newsletters!
Who’s right? This is so interesting.
Oh, I know Bob Lefsetz. Very opinionated. He’s the guy who famously said Taylor Swift’s career was over in 2010. BTW, she’s reportedly a billionaire now…
Love you Ted, but this is silly. I know you’re not the only one doing it, but breathless reporting of the growth of physical media is a disservice to our industry. Your readers need to know how moribund this category actually is. Cassettes, really? And 50% of vinyl purchasers report that they do not own a device on which it can be played. I don’t have the numbers but i predict cassettes are even worse. This is not a category on which anyone should plan their business. It’s a sideshow. I own a premium turntable as do many self-avowed audiophiles and that is a nice niche. But if you want to target the sweet spot in the audio marketplace, this isn’t it.
Gary, what is the sweet spot in the audio marketplace? Not a rhetorical question, I really don’t know.
Brent, my point is that we can believe in legacy technology platforms as our hope for the future, but it never is. The cavalry isn’t coming to save legacy technologies. So we have to face forward into the future. I do have my thoughts about that but it might be more than is appropriate for this comments section.