US CD sales reached 16.3 million units in the first half of 2026, a 16% year-over-year increase, according to Luminate's 2026 midyear report (The Verge). The figure marks a notable reversal of the long decline that had defined the format for most of the streaming era.

The growth is not entirely a K-pop phenomenon. Excluding K-pop releases, CD sales still rose 6.7% year-over-year. Luminate attributed the broader increase to collection building, price accessibility, massive album releases such as BTS' ARIRANG, and a strong K-pop release schedule.

The strangest data point in the report: approximately half of Gen Z and Millennial CD buyers do not own a CD player. Luminate framed this as evidence that the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible. Buyers are purchasing physical discs as objects to own, display, and trade, not as playback media.

Overall US physical album sales, spanning vinyl, CDs, and cassettes, increased 7.8% year-over-year in the first half of 2026 (The Verge). Total physical album units reached 38.2 million, up from 35.5 million in the first half of 2025 (Billboard).

Vinyl remained the largest physical format by volume, with 21.8 million units sold in the first half of 2026. Luminate's Denise Schenasi provided the vinyl and cassette figures directly to The Verge. Vinyl sales grew 2.4% year-over-year (Billboard), a slower growth rate than CDs but still positive for a format that has now sustained momentum well beyond the revival cycle many predicted would be temporary.

Cassette sales reached approximately 205,000 units, a niche but persistent segment within the physical media ecosystem.

The CD growth rate outpacing vinyl is worth flagging. Vinyl has been the physical media success story of the past decade, and its 2.4% growth, while positive, is modest compared to the CD's 16% jump. Part of this is pricing. CDs are cheaper to manufacture and purchase than vinyl, which has seen sustained price escalation driven by production bottlenecks and premium pressing tiers. For younger buyers allocating discretionary spending to physical music as merchandise and collectibles rather than as a listening medium, the lower price point of a CD is a practical advantage.

The K-pop effect is real but not the whole story. The 6.7% growth excluding K-pop indicates a broader behavioral shift among US buyers, one that mirrors what vinyl experienced earlier: a format reacquiring cultural value as an object rather than as a utility. The CD is following a path vinyl already traveled, just at a lower price tier and with a different demographic entry point.

What remains unclear from the data is durability. Vinyl's resurgence has proven remarkably sticky, sustained by Record Store Day events, audiophile pressing quality improvements, and deep integration into artist merchandise strategies. Whether CDs can build comparable infrastructure and cultural rituals around the format, or whether the current surge is more tightly coupled to specific release calendars and K-pop fandom economics, is a question the second-half numbers will begin to answer.

For the music industry, the physical media resurgence continues to defy the simple streaming-displaces-everything narrative. Streaming remains dominant by revenue and consumption volume. But physical formats are carving out a stable, growing niche as collectibles, merchandise, and cultural artifacts, a category that coexists with streaming rather than competing against it.