Are the days of compact disks making a comeback? The Recording Industry Association of America has released their annual sales report which shows that CD sales have seen year-over-year growth for the first time since 2004.
As Axios reported, with the growth of vinyl sales over the last decade, the combination of the two shows that overall physical music sales have grown for the first time since 1996. And the numbers show that physical music sales have actually made somewhere around $1.65 billion in the last year in the U.S. alone for the music industry, according to RIAA reporting.
CD sales grew to $584.2 million in the U.S. last year, with 2021 vinyl sales jumping to $1 billion annually.
In the 1990s when the CD was the most popular format in music industry revenue, annual sales peaked in 2000 at $13.2 billion.
According to RIAA, streaming still accounted for 83% of recorded music revenues in 2021. Physical sales accounted for 11% of sales last year with digital downloads accounting for 4%.
