Gen Z and Millennials are Buying CDs - Though Half Don't Have CD Players (vice.com) 96
"Approximately half of Gen Z and millennials who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player," according to midyear sales statistics from entertainment data company Luminate. It's driven in part by "collection building", according to their report [PDF]:
The CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an
affordable collectible. This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying
physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist
as it is listening to the music on the product itself
"Among artists who had a direct impact on the resurgence of CDs, K-Pop icons BTS' 10th studio album, ARIRANG, was a big seller," Vice points out in their report on the new data. "However, Luminate also found that, beyond K-Pop's overall influence, CD sales still increased 6.7% year over year, even if the whole genre was removed from the equation, jumping 16% to 16.3 million units."
That's more than the growth of vinyl sales (2.4%) — but physical media in general seems to be making a comeback: Through the first half of the year, total physical album sales on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes reached 38.2 million units in the United States. This equates to a 7.8% increase.... [I]t seems that younger music fans have been driving a lot of the retro revival. The report shows that in 2026, 60% of Gen Z listeners said they most often listen to music from the 1990s and older. This is a massive increase from the 18 percent marker in 2021.
The new report also revealed that the way music fans are buying physical media has shifted. Indie record stores have been the largest generator of physical album sales for some time, and they continue to be. However, big-box stores like Target and Walmart took significant strides in the first half of 2026. Collectively, their music sales made up about 30% of the market.
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
"Among artists who had a direct impact on the resurgence of CDs, K-Pop icons BTS' 10th studio album, ARIRANG, was a big seller," Vice points out in their report on the new data. "However, Luminate also found that, beyond K-Pop's overall influence, CD sales still increased 6.7% year over year, even if the whole genre was removed from the equation, jumping 16% to 16.3 million units."
That's more than the growth of vinyl sales (2.4%) — but physical media in general seems to be making a comeback: Through the first half of the year, total physical album sales on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes reached 38.2 million units in the United States. This equates to a 7.8% increase.... [I]t seems that younger music fans have been driving a lot of the retro revival. The report shows that in 2026, 60% of Gen Z listeners said they most often listen to music from the 1990s and older. This is a massive increase from the 18 percent marker in 2021.
The new report also revealed that the way music fans are buying physical media has shifted. Indie record stores have been the largest generator of physical album sales for some time, and they continue to be. However, big-box stores like Target and Walmart took significant strides in the first half of 2026. Collectively, their music sales made up about 30% of the market.
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
Someone should start making CD players (Score:5, Funny)
It's obvious we need new physical media that is cheaper than thumb drives. Someone invent a better solution for dirt cheap write-once media, there's a huge market for it as long as the data lasts.
DVD players (Score:1)
Rip to a M-DISC for posterity (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't have a CD player either. I rip my CDs with a DVD player - duh!
DVD, OK boomer. We’ll use our Blue Ray player, and archive the rips to a M-DISC to preserve it for posterity. ;-)
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Not 100% sure about other countries, but in the US technically you don't have to ever play it or rip it from any disc. Owning the CD is proof you own a license to listen to the music on it. You can literally download or copy anyone else's copy.
This is because when you buy physical media, you are NOT purchasing the music, you are purchasing a license to listen to use the music for yourself. There doesn't have to be any music on the disc, but you do need a way to get it (you see this far more in software, lik
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>DVD, OK boomer. We’ll use our Blue Ray player, and archive the rips to a M-DISC to preserve it for posterity.
You DO realize that your M-DISC, while advertised to have a lifespan of a thousand years, is not 100% compatible with Blu Ray players [mdisc.com]?
"With our new 25 GB Blu-ray M-Disc, you can now archive more easily with a larger capacity disc that is more widely compatible with drives in the market"
So yeah, you might not even be able to rip it,
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How did your comment get modded "insightful"?
You DON'T realize that I was expecting “Funny” not “Insightful”? Woosh!
>> don't have a CD player either. I rip my CDs with a DVD player - duh! ;-)
You DO realize that your M-DISC, while advertised to have a lifespan of a thousand years, is not 100% compatible with Blu Ray players?
>DVD, OK boomer. We’ll use our Blue Ray player, and archive the rips to a M-DISC to preserve it for posterity.
You DO realize that I used “player” to match the GP? And the GP is referring to ripping not playing?
You DO realize that when you rip audio CDs you get digital audio files, ex MP3, and they are just data files on a disc and these files are playable by any modern operating system?. Not an audio CD?
You DO realize that no audio file player cares what device created a properly formatted audio file?
So, using any old Blu Ray to burn your disk won't work.
You DO
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You don't even necessarily need M-Disks, apparently Verbatim switched to HTL technology, the longer-life form used in M-Disks, for all their BluRay stuff, which is what's led to the conspiracy theories about "Verbatim M-Disks are just rebadged BluRays". Well, yes and no...
Thanks, going to have to look into that. Its about time for some old backup DVDs to get copied to new media.
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Why should write-once media be cheaper? Flash memory is dirt cheap. Optical media are more expensive and developing some new write-once medium would have a good payoff to be worth it, that flash with write-lock switch doesn't have.
Re:Someone should start making CD players (Score:4, Informative)
Flash media doesn't last long. There have been studies on that. In theory, optical media can last centuries. I personally have pulled CDs I've burned in the late 1990s to pull some custom WAD files that a local group made on a modern Doom engine.
CDs are physical changes. Flash media, once the electrons have left the gate... game over.
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In theory even (burned) CDs/DVDs rot. I think pressed ones are a bit better.
Re:Someone should start making CD players (Score:4, Informative)
In theory even (burned) CDs/DVDs rot. I think pressed ones are a bit better.
It depends on a lot of factors. pressed CD's put physical pits in the metal layer of the disk. Burned CD's use a laser to alter the dye in the data layer.
Cheaply made or defective pressed disks can allow air into the metal layer and cause oxidization of the aluminum. Apparently there's also an issue with some cardboard packaging as it can contain sulfur. Pressed disks should last you a lifetime if stored properly.
Burned CD's have a huge range. I've seen cheap generic ones go bad in less than 2 years. There are archive grade disks that are rated for 100 to 300 years. They use a reflective layer that is less prone to oxidation as well as more stable dyes that don't discolor as easily as cheaper disks.
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I copied old data CDs to HDD before they rot and they were good as back in the days. Maybe they were just high quality or the modern drive were good at reading them, but I didn't have any problem yet. Still I see why they might degrade.
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In theory even (burned) CDs/DVDs rot. I think pressed ones are a bit better.
I understand that properly-stored stone tablets have outstanding data retention. But the bit density sucks and the read/write speed is a tad slow...
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I personally have pulled CDs I've burned in the late 1990s to pull some custom WAD files that a local group made on a modern Doom engine.
I personally have pulled CDs I've burned in the mid 2000s only to find them non-readable less than a decade later. The HDD with the original data on it outlasted them while in service.
Theory is one thing. Practice is quite another. There is endless examples of rotting on CDs in the reflective layer, both from home burned discs as well as commerical pressings.
Ideally in theory you can get archival grade DVD-RW, they have really long term stability. CDs are just a crapshoot.
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Flash media is cheap if bought blank. It's expensive if you have to program it.
Optical media is expensive individually, but dirt cheap when you can press them by the thousands per hour.
That's why optical media hangs around - a CD can be stamped in about a second - it's basically just a more precise form of injection molding. The same applies for DVDs and Blu-Rays - they can stamped out in seconds.
But flash memory cannot. If you go with the cheap fl
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That's an interesting point. But assuming you would not have a software/music company wanting to program them, but the manufacturer would offer them to buy them preprogrammed, wouldn't that change efficiency? Assembling let's say a USB stick takes more than a few seconds anyway. Probably not much more, but possibly enough to program the flash chip in the meantime.
Re: Someone should start making CD players (Score:2)
Cheaper than a free USB stick? I realize that went haywire a lot with the AIpocalypse but I used to set the size for that at under 128GBs.
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Depends on the country.
In Germany the price is artificially inflated by "copyright fees" to pay to some RIAA like organizations, as every USB stick is obviously full with pirated material (and pirating is a jailable offence).
I should smuggle USB sticks from Asia and sell them on eBay in Germany ... 500% to 1000% earnings.
Re: Someone should start making CD players (Score:2)
What does a 64 GB flash drive run in Germany?
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Amazon says about $10 (a bit more).
Did not investigate deeper, as in a shop it easily hits $20.
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Crazy how the media organizations want to have their cake and eat it too. If they are going to assume every blank media will be used to pirate, and thus tax appropriately, then they have no right to go after pirates. After all they are already being paid by the would-be pirates in advance. Greed knows no bounds.
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IMHO, I'd like to see this as an excuse for some company to start making 10TB disks in a CD/DVD format. HVD was discussed, and some Chinese firm has 100TB on a single platter, so it can be done.
This only wouldn't just be a boon for music, but in a WORM format, perfect for backups, without needing to shell out $6-10k for a LTO tape drive.
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You don't need a "CD player" (Score:5, Insightful)
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>"I don't have one either. I buy CDs to have physical media, and then transfer it to my computer and then to my phone."
Well, you have a "CD player" on your computer, then, essentially. I do the same thing. I have hundreds of CD's. New ones get ripped in Linux on my 5.25" half-height, internal BlueRay/DVD/CD SATA drive on my main home desktop, encoded/tagged, and then transferred to my digital collection that gets copied to every device I use (laptops, phone, car, work, etc).
I rarely listen to "streami
Re: You don't need a "CD player" (Score:2)
Pretty much every CD drive is also a CD player. GP is right.
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Re: You don't need a "CD player" (Score:2)
Everything needs to play the CD is on the drive. The audio is decided by the drive. And as someone else noted, all you need is power and headphones on many drives. The drive is the player. The PC is just the controller.
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I think more people have physical CD players than CD drives in their computers these days. I think you're applying more logic from your own experience than most people deserve. The reality is a shitload of people buy it for the ownership "cred".
Re:You don't need a "CD player" (Score:5, Informative)
Walmart?
Just did a search, indicated I wanted stuff that's in stock at my local Walmart, and they sell a whole bunch of ONN (their house electronics brand) CD radio combos. Two even have cassette players which I find interesting. Prices are about $30.
Next comeback... (Score:2)
AM radio, followed by shortwaves.
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AM radio, followed by shortwaves.
Well yeah, but only because Disney couldn't find an audience anywhere else..
As a "collectable" ... (Score:3)
The CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible.
Don't play it too often, the laser will wear it out. ;-)
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Or the sticky Mount Dew residue will eat them.
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doh! Mountain Dew
Archiving data (Score:2)
Please keep in mind that a flash drive is next to useless for long term storage. It will randomize over a surprisingly short time if it doesn't have power for data maintenance.
Your typical CD is better but still not good enough - under perfect conditions it will outlast you, but the way most people store them you might be really disappointed when you try to read it a decade from now. You're also going to run into the issue that even 20 years from now there may not be a consumer 'CD reader' available.
For m
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>"Your typical CD is better but still not good enough - under perfect conditions it will outlast you, but the way most people store them you might be really disappointed when you try to read it a decade from now. You're also going to run into the issue that even 20 years from now there may not be a consumer 'CD reader' available."
Maybe? I occasionally read one of my 20 or 30+ year old factory CD's and none of them have ever had any issue. No fancy storage, just in their original cases in a cabinet insi
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Writes age it, so the best method is to write once, then plug it in for a while every few years to let it do whatever automatic maintenance can or must be done. And honestly, I'm not sure whether that's baked into the hardware or if you need some software process to check the thing. Not my area of expertise.
In theory you can throw one in a drawer and it'll be fine a decade later... but you can't trust that it will be.
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Flash memory doesn't work like that. You would need to read and rewrite every bit to "freshen" the charge. Just powering up a drive for a while does not accomplish that.
Re: Archiving data (Score:3)
Pretty sure you don't have to rewrite it (explicitly), since part of the driver's function is to detect weakly charged sectors and rewrite them automatically.
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> It will randomize over a surprisingly short time if it doesn't have power for data maintenance.
If you plug in a USB stick, you just power up the controller and the flash memory chip. You have to read everything and write everything to charge the cells back up again, there is no background refresh going on like in DRAM.
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There's no reason to believe turntables will be readily available in 20 years but CD drives won't.
I'm putting my money on both being available, because any new format they might propose wouldn't have functionally better quality, and it would be encumbered with all kinds of other crap to make it less-desirable.
I hope... (Score:2)
...they all know about CD-Rot.
This makes Christmas and Birthdays easier (Score:1)
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Want to come over and use my CD player? I have Monster Cable.
Would totally suck if the blue tooth adapter is not gold plated. :-)
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I think totally sucking definitely was part of what he had in mind. Fourplay is important.
And no I didn't make a typo.
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Want to come over and use my CD player? I have Monster Cable.
If you're using the word "monster" to describe your cable, then you probably aren't going to get laid...
Something nice (Score:3)
There's something real nice about having a single, physical album and having to take the effort to put it in the player. There are hundreds of great CD players on eBay too. There's an investment in putting the CD in and experiencing an entire album. I think we're hardwired to understand that, and it can't be replaced by digital streaming, no matter how it's programmed.
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There's something real nice about having a single, physical album and having to take the effort to put it in the player.
What a pity you can't get up half way through and flip it over to play the other side
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There's something real nice about having a single, physical album and having to take the effort to put it in the player.
Been there and done that, with records, tapes, and CDs. I don't find it to be as nice as working with music files on a computer.
There's an investment in putting the CD in and experiencing an entire album. I think we're hardwired to understand that, and it can't be replaced by digital streaming, no matter how it's programmed.
There's an even bigger investment in choosing songs from a variety of albums, artists, and genres to make an on-the-fly "mixtape" which I can then save as a playlist, enjoy repeatedly, and tweak as the mood strikes me.
In my experience there are two kinds of "entire album". One of them rewards listening from beginning to end, while the other rewards choosing the best and ignoring th
Supporting the artists (Score:2)
I have a bunch of friends who go to shows and buy the CDs, just as other merchadising stuff, in order to support the artists. I, myself, have about a dozen on a shelf, but I actually listen to them on-line.
and I have an BOX full of DVD/CD drives! (Score:2)
and I have an BOX full of DVD/CD drives!
Most people don't need unlimited media (Score:2)
And many figure out that an intimate relationship with fewer songs is actually better.
Also fuck Spotify, what a gross corporation that commoditizes art and artists while making them fight for scraps.
I never gave up on physical media (Score:1)
I stream a lot of what I watch and listen to, but I never got rid of my physical media or the players. I'm old and a lot of what I like to watch isn't on streaming. I have three full 400 disk DVD players in my living room and a Blu Ray player. I still buy movies on blu ray. My media room has a blu ray player and a couple 400 disk changers as well. There are 12 DVD or Blu ray drives or recorders in the computers in the room I'm sitting in currently. I haven't used them much in some time, but they work and I
So glad i never abandoned most formats. (Score:1)
I've kept most formats, but abandoned tape in all formats.
I LP, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and stream.
And rip.
Ripping replaced my tape deck. Make my own "mixtapes" only now they're playlists. I rip vinyl to MP3 like I use dto make tapes for my car or walkman.
Streaming is for Suckers, and for Convenience.
Physical is permanent (to some definition of "permanent")
I just bought my first paper manga in a while, after reading the digital. It's so good it's no shame to double-dip this one, get the author her 100 yen per
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They're still being made for vehicles. The wife wanted a cd player for her car so I found one from good old Crutchfield. They know which wiring harness adapters you'll need and even have adapters for making the steering wheel controls work. Besides playing cds the radio also has usb and bluetooth.
Ha! (Score:1)
More junk collections (Score:3)
There were too many produced to be worth anything. Collect all you want but how valuable could they be, even in or 30-50 years.
Buy stock in storage units, where everyone will surely pack their parents china and other shit they collected but no one wants.
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>"Buy stock in storage units, where everyone will surely pack their parents china and other shit they collected but no one wants."
^ This
I found out when trying to sell some of my Mom's stuff for her move a few years ago. Absolutely nobody wants or cares about china, crystal, or silver (other than scrap value). Same thing with most antique furniture. It is all almost worthless.
Jokes on them (Score:2)
When they finally open the shrink wrap and pop their collectible CD into a player, all they will hear is Rick Astley.
Damn millennials (Score:2)
My 2001 Mercury Sable has a kick ass radio with tape player. I used to visit Goodwill at least once a month to get old rock tapes for less than a buck a piece. Over the past year the selection has been very slim. It must be those damn millennials screwing things up again.
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My 2001 Mercury Sable has a kick ass radio with tape player
I'm assuming you spend most of your time sitting in the driveway while enjoying your kick ass tape player? I had a late 90s Sable and it spent much more time at the repair shop than I ever spent driving it. I had even updated it with an in-dash CD player for like $175, so it made me even more mad when it ended up in the scrap pile after yet another disastrous $1500+ mechanical failure.
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Oh my goodness no. The little old lady that owned the car before me had every recall service bulletin taken care of right away. She also had the known faulty struts replaced when they started failing with heavy duty struts. Other than that the car had been trouble free for her probably due to the fact it was kept in a climate controlled garage. She supplied me with a complete history of work performed on the car, the usual oil changes every 3K to5K miles. This is my daily driver car and it's fantastic. I've
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Oh, I forgot to mention, after about a year of owning the car someone in a Walmart parking lot knocked the passenger side mirror clean off the car. I picked up another one on eBay for about $60. When it happened it shorted out either the motor or heating element wiring causing some of the electrical components in the car to fail (windows would not work, etc..). Turned out to be a blown fuse which I'll admit was a real pain in the ASCII to replace since the fuse box is located deep under the dash.
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I've owned it for about 5 years now, completely trouble free. In the trunk there is a hookup for an optional 6 CD changer
That's amazing, I hope your good fortune continues! My parents also had a Sable, and theirs had the trunk-based 6 CD changer which they enjoyed (but rarely changed the CDs that were loaded as it was obviously impossible to change which discs were loaded while driving). Both of these vehicles are now cubes of metal somewhere, as GM had very poor reliability records with the Sable and they both were very expensive to repair, sadly.
They're also buying old stereo equipment (Score:2)
Pre-1990 stereo equipment in excellent looking condition is making a comeback as well. And it doesn't even have to work. People are using them as pieces of artwork. Not even plugging them in.
Say, what?! (Score:2)
"CD sales still increased 6.7% year over year, even if the whole genre was removed from the equation, jumping 16% to 16.3 million units."
That's gotta be money laundering. CD sales have decreased an average of 12% per year, for the past quarter century.
They CAN'T take away your CD's, but digital Yes ! (Score:2)
I Speculate (Score:2)
The mechanism is speculation. Speculators are trying to find the next "big think" that they can buy on eBay and sell for a profit before it ever gets shipped to them. NOT JOKING. It's speculators buying and selling to speculators etc. etc. etc. No real fans are involved past maybe the initial round of price hiking.
it's background decor (Score:2)
Prop a few CDs on your bookshelf in the background while you stream.
Same for LPs (Score:2)
I read an article a couple of weeks ago about how millennials are buying vinyl but most don't own turntables.
Found it (Score:2)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/14... [cnn.com]
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Well, I have lots of old vinyl, but I got rid of my turntables.
What is "CD player"? (Score:2)
Define "CD player"? If these folks have a computer with a CD/DVD drive, they have a CD player, but it's not a CD player. The real question is whether these folks even have any computer other than their phone.
Maybe... (Score:2)
Because it means that we actually *OWN* that copy, and it can't be deleted from our "devices" (Sony? Amazon?). And the musician actually gets more money than the miniscule fraction of a penny per song.
SACD and DVDA (Score:2)