According to the RIAA’s latest report, U.S. CD units increased 45.7% in the first half of 2026, reaching 17.5 million compared with approximately 12 million during the same period last year. Wholesale CD revenue climbed even faster, rising 58.6% to $171.1 million. Those are two different measurements, and both are moving in a direction the supposedly dead format wasn’t expected to go.
Now, six months of growth doesn’t mean we’re heading back to the days of a Discman in every backpack. Streaming still accounted for 82% of U.S. recorded music revenue during that period. But for those of us who never stopped buying CDs, it’s encouraging to see some life in a format we’ve been defending for years.
I understand why streaming took over. Having an enormous music library available on your phone is convenient, and I use it myself. Discovering an artist and hearing their album immediately is something I would have loved growing up.
What I have a harder time accepting is the idea that convenience made everything we had before it worthless. The albums, the artwork, the record stores, the act of buying something you cared about and taking it home. There was value in that experience, and there still is.
Here are five reasons I believe the compact disc deserves another look...
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1. Buying an album gives your support somewhere to go
The artists are the reason any of this exists. Before there were playlists, streaming platforms, or expensive systems to play music through, somebody had to make something worth hearing.
We talk about supporting musicians all the time, but it’s easy to confuse listening to someone with financially supporting them in a meaningful way.
Streaming does generate royalties. The problem is that there’s no universal amount an artist takes home every time you press play. Spotify, for example, pays rights holders based on their share of streams, and what ultimately reaches the artist depends on their agreements with labels or distributors. There can still be plenty of hands in the cookie jar.
Buying a new CD directly from an independent artist gives you a more deliberate way to support their work. Manufacturing, packaging, payment fees, and shipping still cost money, so it isn’t pure profit. But you are making a purchase specifically because you value what that person created.
Bandcamp says an average of 82% of a purchase goes to the artist or their label, before their own costs. That includes more than CDs, but it illustrates why buying directly can matter.
There’s a distinction worth making here: buying a used CD supports the seller or record store. Buying a new copy through the artist’s store or merch table can support the artist more directly. Both purchases have value, but they do different things.
If an album has gotten you through a rough year, kept you company on your commute, or become something you couldn’t imagine being without, buying a copy seems like a pretty reasonable thank-you.
2. The experience deserves to survive
I can’t tell you how many times I looked forward to a Tuesday morning release or spent far longer than I intended browsing the racks at Wherehouse Music.
Walking into a music shop was an experience. Posters covered the walls, Nag Champa hung in the air, and rows of CDs and records waited for you to find something. Sometimes you knew exactly what you wanted. Sometimes you left with an album because the cover caught your attention and you decided to take a chance.
Then you brought it home, opened the booklet, and listened.
I miss being that involved in an album. Reading the lyrics while the song played. Looking at the photographs. Finding out who played guitar on a particular track or who the band thanked. The packaging gave you another way into the music.
Of course there’s nostalgia attached to that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But a younger listener doesn’t need memories of a mall record store to enjoy discovering an album, owning it, and spending time with it.
That experience is still available. We just stopped making much room for it.
When practically everything on your phone is competing for your attention, putting on a CD feels like giving one thing permission to hold it for a while. I think that’s worth passing along.
3. The sound quality was never the problem
Somewhere along the way, people started treating CD quality like a limitation we needed to escape.
Standard audio CDs use 16-bit, 44.1 kHz digital audio. That is also the resolution commonly described as “CD quality” by lossless streaming services. Qobuz, for example, offers lossless audio at that resolution and higher.
A well-recorded, well-mastered CD can sound fantastic. Clean playback, excellent detail, powerful bass, and no surface noise from a stylus moving through a groove. You don’t have to spend a fortune to hear what makes the format worthwhile.
I enjoy vinyl, too. I understand the appeal of the larger artwork, the equipment, and the process of playing a record. But CDs give you an incredibly satisfying listening experience with very little fuss. Put the disc in, press play, and enjoy the album.
We should also be honest about what determines the sound. A CD doesn’t automatically beat a lossless stream just because it’s a physical object. An expensive transport doesn’t automatically make it better, either. The recording, mastering, and playback system all matter.
That’s why I care about which version of an album I’m buying. Some older CDs have mastering I prefer to a later remaster. Other releases sound better in their newer editions. “Remastered” doesn’t guarantee an improvement, and “original pressing” doesn’t guarantee perfection.
The advantage of owning the edition you enjoy is that you can keep listening to that edition.
You don’t have to convince yourself that every CD sounds better than every alternative. The format already sounds good enough to deserve a place in a serious music system.
4. A mix CD still means something
A good friend of mine still has a Case Logic binder filled with CDs from her high school days. Road trip mixes, discs from friends, and mixes somebody made because they had a crush and apparently needed twelve songs to explain it.
There’s a reason those discs survived.
Making a mix required decisions. You had limited space, so you had to choose what belonged. The opening track mattered. The transition between songs mattered. You could spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to find the right ending.
Then you wrote something on the disc and handed it to someone.
I know you can put that same care into a playlist. People absolutely do. But I still think there’s something special about receiving an object that somebody made for you. You can put it in a drawer, find it years later, and remember who gave it to you before you even hear the first song.
The handwriting alone can bring somebody back.
A mix CD is a small thing, but music has always had a way of making small things matter. I’d hate to see that disappear just because sending a link is easier.
5. We have an opportunity to own our music again
This is the part of the CD conversation that matters most to me.
When you buy a CD, you have a copy of the album in your possession. You don’t need an active subscription to play it. You don’t need to sign into an account. Your disc keeps working regardless of what happens to a streaming catalog.
You do need to take care of it. CDs can be damaged, and no physical format lasts forever. But maintaining a collection is a very different relationship from paying every month for continued access.
There’s also room for that collection to fit into a modern listening setup. CDs and a digital music library can coexist. You can enjoy the packaging and the player while also appreciating the convenience of files.
And the opportunity extends beyond our own shelves.
More interest in CDs could give independent record stores another reason to stock them. It could give artists a reason to offer a thoughtful physical release, with lyrics, photographs, credits, and artwork worth spending time with. It could give equipment manufacturers more confidence that people still want reliable players.
I’d love to see that happen without turning every album into an overpriced collectible. Affordability is part of the appeal. People should be able to build a collection because they love the music, without needing every purchase to become an investment.
The best outcome would be more albums available, more people listening, and more reasons to walk into a record store.
The 2026 numbers are encouraging, but the reason I buy CDs hasn’t changed. I like having my music. I like choosing an album from a shelf, opening the booklet, and listening to something I bought twenty years ago with the same freedom I had the day I brought it home.
Keep streaming if you enjoy it. Discover something new. Then, when you find an album that means something to you, consider buying a copy.
An album you love deserves more than a place in your listening history.
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