Retro tech is making a comeback, and this week, the Recording Business Affiliation of America (RIAA) put laborious numbers to that development when it comes to music consumption habits. Surprisingly, the group reported that CDs — sure, the shiny, spherical issues that Spotify supposedly killed — are rising as soon as once more.
In response to the RIAA’s new report, CDs generated $171.1 million in income throughout the first half of 2026 — up 58.6% from roughly $107.9 million within the first half of 2025 — on 17.5 million models bought, up 45.7% from about 12 million models in the identical interval final 12 months.
That rebound is all of the extra fascinating as a result of it follows a tough 2025. Final 12 months’s full-year report confirmed CD income had truly fallen 7.8% for the total 12 months, from $338.9 million in 2024 to $312.4 million in 2025, whereas models bought dropped 11.6%, from 33.3 million to 29.5 million.
The expansion comes amid a surge of renewed curiosity in less complicated tech, like so-called “dumbphones,” digital cameras, typewriters, landlines, and bodily media like CDs and vinyl, amongst different classes. For Gen Z, the demand for these units represents a form of craving for an period of tech they by no means obtained to expertise — the place you had extra management over whenever you engaged with expertise and the way, and tech itself had much less room to invade your life with its notifications, addictive apps, and algorithms.
A number of startups are taking part in on this area now, too, together with landline makers like Tin Can, Ooma, and Pinwheel, and non-smartphones like these from Mild, Dumb Co, Minimal, and others, together with the soon-to-launch BlackBerry-like Clicks. In the meantime, Gen Z shoppers are snapping up previous devices at thrift shops or on classic tech web sites like eBay or Retrospekt.
And to be truthful, the development might be larger than the RIAA’s numbers show, as they don’t embrace used CD gross sales, like these discs purchased from thrift bins or storage gross sales, nor do they account for what number of CDs have now been handed down from Gen X mother and father to their children.
We should always observe there’s one caveat to the development right here.
The RIAA modified the way it calculates greenback figures in 2025, switching from estimated retail worth to wholesale worth. Which means the 2024 and 2025 income numbers aren’t instantly comparable. However unit gross sales, which aren’t affected by that change, inform the identical basic story: 29.5 million CDs bought in 2025, down from 33.3 million in 2024. So CDs had been nonetheless declining earlier than this 12 months’s sudden rebound.
Vinyl gross sales proceed to develop, too. In truth, so-called bodily media income within the first half of 2026 jumped 25.9% to $731.5 million, pushed not solely by the 58.6% enhance in CD income but in addition by a 17.7% enhance in vinyl income.
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