Compact disc sales were up 16% in the first quarter of 2026, with over 16 million discs sold.

Combined physical music sales including vinyl and cassettes were also up by 7.8% in the US, totalling more than 38 million units.

https://www.xxlmag.com/cd-sales-comeback/

https://consequence.net/2026/07/the-cd-revival-is-getting-hard-to-ignore/

Hmmm. CDs could sometimes sell more than 500 million per quarter in the 1990s.

This is akin to hypothetically looking at console sales circa 2050 and saying they're booming because they sold 11,000 worldwide in total vs. 10,000 the month before.

The highest selling year for cds was the year 2000 with 942.5 million sold in the United States. Not sure where you're getting the 500 million per quarter figure? 

Physical media for music has been on the rise for quite a while now. With vinyl sales surpassing 1 billion dollars in America in 2025. It's a very positive sign to see cd sales are growing even faster than vinyl.

If the record industry can sell CD's in 2026, what excuse does Sony have? They claim it's because of a certain percentage number. But I can promise you, whatever that number is, it's far larger than the number of total music listeners buying compact discs.

I never stopped buying them, CD player in the car is still great!

I'm glad I never stopped buying CDs!

Some friends I know that buy vinyl primarily due it for display purposes. I'm like, that's 40 bucks a pop! You better be listening to them lol. I prefer CDs though. Simpler and smaller setup, but can get some amazing audio out of them.

What could this mean

Still a CD buyer here as well. Don't buy nearly as many as I used to, but still get some every year to support my favourite artists (as well as stores that sell CDs).

I never stopped. Though my purchasing went down a bit over the years. My old brain can't handle too much new music these days.

This is great news. CD sales, vinyl sales, and even paid digital purchases are much better overall for the musicians. While the record company still gets a huge amount of each unit sold (and arguably a slightly larger cut), a CD purchase equates to almost 1,000 streams depending on the platform