RIAA figures for the first half of 2026 show US CD sales up 58.6% and vinyl up 17.7%, with physical revenue as a whole rising 25.9% against a total US recorded music market of about $6 billion. The compact disc — the format that was supposed to have died twice — is currently the fastest-growing music medium in the United States.
The RIAA attributes it to continued fan interest in different ways of experiencing music, which is a polite way of saying that people who care about a record want to own it. Special editions, remasters and reissues do most of the work, and a CD is still far cheaper to press than a record.
There is a hardware consequence that gets less attention. A generation of CD players, transports and disc drives is now twenty to thirty years old, and the failures are mechanical and electrolytic rather than digital: perished belts, dried-out capacitors in the power supply, worn spindle bearings, laser sleds that stick. The optics usually last longer than people assume.
That is good news for anyone holding on to a decent player. Most of these machines were engineered to be serviced, the failure modes are well understood, and a careful repair generally costs less than a new unit of comparable build quality.
Source: Tom’s Hardware