CD sales rise 16 percent as fans back favorite artists

Fans bought 16.3 million CDs in the first half of 2026 in the United States, a 16 percent increase from a year earlier, as CD sales growth outpaced vinyl nearly 7-to-1. Luminate’s midyear music report, presented with Billboard, puts the format’s rebound back in the market’s center even as streaming remains the dominant way people hear music.

The same report shows how limited the comeback is as a replacement story. Global on-demand audio streams grew 9.8 percent in the first half of 2026, while U.S. on-demand audio streams rose 4.4 percent. Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Music Report had already said total U.S. album consumption kept rising even as the industry changed how music is consumed and monetized, and the company has increasingly described physical formats as part of a direct-to-consumer era in which artists and fans connect more directly.

That makes the CD rebound look less like a return to the 1990s than a different kind of purchase behavior. A CD is a one-time, ownable buy, and it sits below vinyl on price for most shoppers. A survey by NPD Music Watch Price Lab once put the average CD price in U.S. stores at $12.95. By contrast, Record Store Day 2025 moved 1.2 million albums in the U.S., with just over 1 million on vinyl, a reminder that much of the physical market still clusters around collectors, event shopping and direct support for artists.

The economics for musicians are more complicated than the retail tag suggests. Recording contracts usually pay artists royalties somewhere between 8 percent and 25 percent of the suggested retail price, depending on the deal. On a CD priced at $12.95, that would translate to roughly $1.04 to $3.24 before contract terms and other deductions are taken into account. That leaves CDs attractive to fans who want a tangible release and still want more of their money to reach the artist than a stream typically delivers.

The longer arc matters too. The Recording Industry Association of America said U.S. CD sales rose in 2021 for the first time in almost two decades after years of decline. Four years later, the format is growing again, but the numbers point to a market driven as much by fandom and merch-style buying as by a broad-based return to disc players and shelf space.