Business CD sales grow for first time since 2004 - 2021 CD sales were up more than $100 million from 2020.

https://www.axios.com/cd-sales-grow-for-first-time-since-2004-0745a5ce-a2f3-4ed3-8b1e-14b20f0b218e.html

Dust off those plastic binders that lived in the back seat of your car and fire up the boombox, because compact discs are back.

• CD sales enjoyed year-over-year growth for the first time since 2004, according to the Recording Industry Association of America's annual sales report.
• Combined with the decade-long vinyl sales explosion, overall physical music sales grew for the first time since 1996.

Why it matters: Streaming is the new lifeblood of the music industry, but physical music is enjoying a resurgence that can no longer be dismissed as a passing fad driven by hardcore collectors.

By the numbers: Physical music sales exploded to the tune of $1.65 billion in the U.S. last year, according to the RIAA data.

• CD sales grew to $584.2 million nationally last year, up more than $100 million from 2020. By comparison, 2021 vinyl sales increased to $1 billion annually, up from $643.9 million.

Zoom in: It's especially good news for local record stores, like Grimey's on East Trinity Lane. Co-owner Doyle Davis tells Axios that vinyl is still king, but CD sales have "held their own."

• Davis has noticed strong CD sales for new albums, especially when there is a delay in the vinyl release, and pointed to the new album by Adia Victoria last year as an example.
• "I think really this is about young people who are finding they like hard copies of music in the digital age," Davis says.

Be smart: The CD was the music industry's leading format in the 1990s, peaking at $13.2 billion in annual sales in 2000.

• You know what happened next. Napster and illegal streaming sites gave way to paid streaming, which now accounts for $8.6 billion in annual revenue.
• In addition to record stores, artists have appreciated the rise in vinyl — and now CD sales — because it gives them another avenue to sell their music.

What they're saying: "I just think the whole thing is great," Davis says. "It speaks to the health and the overall comeback of physical media in general."

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Time to bust out your Discman, frens. What's old is new again!

 

[Getting tard comed]

What makes CDs better than vinyl? I've always heard vinyl has the best sound quality. Is it the portability/storage ability of CDs?

Glad to see people buying physical media so it can't be taken away on a whim. Hopefully some people are realizing the world we live in.

 

[Socrates]

What makes CDs better than vinyl? I've always heard vinyl has the best sound quality. Is it the portability/storage ability of CDs?

Glad to see people buying physical media so it can't be taken away on a whim. Hopefully some people are realizing the world we live in.

The sound quality hype around vinyl is all horse shit, CD is generally almost always better quality. Not that vinyl isn't cool, it turns the music listening into more of a ritual where you're more likely to listen to the whole album as it was intended to be listened to, because skipping songs is more difficult than just pushing a button.

 

[JosephStalin]

I don't like earbuds, so i can understand the headphones.

Not everyone can wear earbuds. I cannot. Must wear headphones due to hearing loss. Headphones allow sound to propagate via bone conduction.

 

[NoReturn]

I just pirate everything again but it'd be cool if people had binders of CDs in their cars again.. and CD players.

Look at Mr. Fancy-pants with his car that was built recently enough to not have a CD player.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

If only pop music was popular enough to justify buying CDs.

Seriously, CDs do have more versatility than streaming sites. You have a hard copy to rip from whenever you need it.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

The sound quality hype around vinyl is all horse shit, CD is generally almost always better quality. Not that vinyl isn't cool, it turns the music listening into more of a ritual where you're more likely to listen to the whole album as it was intended to be listened to, because skipping songs is more difficult than just pushing a button.

It's not really horse shit. CD audio has a reputation for being just loud because of things like the loudness war. My favorite example is Death Magnetic. The good mix somehow ended up in Guitar Hero 3.

CD audio itself is not bad. Most people don't care about the technical details and just blame the format.

 

[Absolutego]

The only problem is a lot of them sound like shit because CDs usually (not always, but usually) get the loud, overly compressed masters while vinyl gets the more dynamic masters. CDs can theoretically sound perfect, but engineers fuck everything up.

I'm holding onto my best CDs until I'm old and gray though, I'm never going to be on board with just streaming music. Gives way too much control over your own listening habits to some corporation.

It helps to have built-in limits to how much you can maximize compression in the very medium the music's played on. The worst Loudness War records actually had to be remastered to work on vinyl because without enough range the needle just turns the record into sonic mud.

 

[Aidan]

Look at Mr. Fancy-pants with his car that was built recently enough to not have a CD player.

Actually I have avoided the bluetooth black magic but I mostly use the aux cable or radio for my audio needs as is.

 

[Ahriman]

It's not really horse shit. CD audio has a reputation for being just loud because of things like the loudness war. My favorite example is Death Magnetic. The good mix somehow ended up in Guitar Hero 3.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Nfqpr3ygSgCD audio itself is not bad. Most people don't care about the technical details and just blame the format.

I'd argue that it's a problem with audio mixing here (like you said), not the media format. I am sure that the GH3 version would sound great if pressed on CD, just blame the audio engineers for rushing out a poorly mixed product - and audiophiles for falling into the "vinyl sounds richer and fuller" meme.

CDs in and of itself are perfectly fine.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I'd argue that it's a problem with audio mixing here (like you said), not the media format. I am sure that the GH3 version would sound great if pressed on CD, just blame the audio engineers for rushing out a poorly mixed product - and audiophiles for falling into the "vinyl sounds richer and fuller" meme.

CDs in and of itself are perfectly fine.

They're objectively better, from a technological standpoint at least. I collect vinyl (and now I'm moving on to 78s because god help me) because it brings back good memories, it's tactile, and it sounds nice, but I would not for a single moment claim it sounded better than a CD. Vinyl has a little over half the dynamic range of CD, which anyone will notice if they're listening on half-way decent speakers. There's just no comparison.

 

[Uranus Pink]

Weren't audio DVDs better than CDs or that was hype?

 

[NewRetroVagina23]

They're objectively better, from a technological standpoint at least. I collect vinyl (and now I'm moving on to 78s because god help me) because it brings back good memories, it's tactile, and it sounds nice, but I would not for a single moment claim it sounded better than a CD. Vinyl has a little over half the dynamic range of CD, which anyone will notice if they're listening on half-way decent speakers. There's just no comparison.

Most people have no idea shit like the RIAA curve even exists. The music sounds "better" because it's been fucked with, simple as.

 

[DuckSucker]

What makes CDs better than vinyl? I've always heard vinyl has the best sound quality. Is it the portability/storage ability of CDs?

Glad to see people buying physical media so it can't be taken away on a whim. Hopefully some people are realizing the world we live in.

Your car probably has a cd player, your computer probably has a disc drive. Its just easier to listen to. In old cars, and cheaper cars I dont think its entirely dead yet.

Im a hipster for vinyl but I will fully admit thats because Im a fag and I kind of love the "warmth" of the sound, and I like the aspect where you have to put the record on and you sit down in a chair and you actually make an act out of listening to it rather than it being background noise or you putting it on and walking away. You read the jacket, you look at the album art while youre listening to it and then you flip it over.

Plus the album art and the square format covers are kinda cool. My friend had a girlfriend who did that hipster thing of having a wall mural of her favorite album sleeves back in college.

 

[Jamal McGucci]

Weren't audio DVDs better than CDs or that was hype?

that was just hype and snake oil unless it was a 5.1 master.

 

[NewRetroVagina23]

Weren't audio DVDs better than CDs or that was hype?

Yes and no. From a technical standpoint, it is absolutely better. Will you ever notice, though? Not a chance! Around 1-2% of the population globally are enough of a genetic fluke to be physically capable of that.

 

[Myles the Potatophile]

I've been buying vinyl and CDs for the last 12 years. I never had much of anything when I was younger, so I've always had some deep appreciation for physical media. When Netflix started doing streaming services after their DVD mailings were successful, I thought that if streaming got too popular, we'd all be at the mercy of the service. They'll pick and choose what they want you to see as opposed to letting you see anything you want at will. Makes physical media all the more valuable in practicality.

 

[Scale Smerch]

Probably betrays my age but I'm still a sucker for burning CDs whenever possible to listen to music. Hell the main reason I keep buying used cars is because none of the modern shit even comes with CD players anymore; FM converters ain't good enough, I might download (read: pirate like a maniac) but you don't get the same sound quality running through compatible devices - it's disc or nothing.

Nevertheless kind of surprised CD (and record) sales are seeing a slight uptick. Zoomers have been big on Spotify and other assorted nonsense so I'd expect their money to go towards subscriptions, but I guess enough have common sense to appreciate where the real quality lies.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

Here's hoping people are getting the CDs to preserve against iTunes and Spotify deleting songs that don't jive with Current Year.

I get CDs cus they're lossless, I don't like needing an internet connection to listen to my music and I don't like DRM in general. They're also super cheap, I got Hybrid Theory and Meteora new including the additional media for like 15 quid and the prices keep dropping.

Weren't audio DVDs better than CDs or that was hype?

DVD-As are pointless because like no album actually needs that much space. Every CD I have is just uncompressed WAVs at 1411kbps (which is in fact a slightly higher sample rate than the FLACs I get off Bandcamp) and there's still a ton of space left over. The only thing they add is annoying copy protection and who wants that noise

 

[Fomo Hoire]

If only pop music was popular enough to justify buying CDs.

Quoted for the humor of "pop" music not being "pop"ular enough. Gotta love language.

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Re: Streaming sites, I like the idea of the convenience, but between being a cheapo and a weeb I just can't use them. I'm considering going with a self hosted (or at least a private managed) instance. That way I can have the ownership of real cds combined with the accessibility of The Cloud

Spoiler: Shilly

There's this OSS hosting service starting up that is giving people $50 account credit to beta test their platform. I am NOT sponsored by them or anything, I have no ulterior motive to push people to them, but they do request that anyone who joins during beta actually do bug reports and suggestions and stuff to improve the service.

I'm playing with Navidrome through them right now for streaming music, if I like it enough then depending on how much music I just hoarded vs how much I actually listen to regularly, I may spin up a navidrome on its own server elsewhere.

If anyone wants to play around with the free credits, for a single Navidrome instance it will last 8 months at $5.81 for 1TB storage, up to 22 months for 10GB storage ($2.21).

 

[UselessIdiot]

I wonder how much of this is K-pop albums, since they will release multiple versions of the same mini-album/album and fans will buy many copies to collect member photocards.