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The story
According to U.S. market research firm Luminate, CD sales rose 16% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, outpacing vinyl records’ 2.4% increase. The buyers are said to be mostly Gen Z and millennials, with 16.3 million copies sold in the U.S. alone. Reacting to the news of why physical CDs are being chosen in the streaming era, a 5ch thread buzzed with a mix of takes — from “it’s just merch for supporting your favorite idol (oshi-katsu)” and “collector’s items” to skepticism over whether Gen Z actually bothers listening to them, debates over CD durability and sound quality, and comparisons with vinyl, cassettes, and MiniDiscs.
Mon, 9/7, 5:30 PM
According to the data, many Gen Z listeners are using those shiny round discs to listen to pre-90s music. Why has the CD boom returned in the middle of the streaming era? Here’s a look at what’s behind the revival.
CDs are selling again. According to a report from industry research firm Luminate, CD sales rose 16% in the first half of 2026. And you might be surprised to learn who’s buying them: Gen Z and millennial fans are snapping up those shiny aluminum discs — so quintessentially ’90s — at a furious pace. In the U.S. alone, that amounts to 16.3 million copies. That growth rate even outpaces vinyl records, which grew just 2.4%. There’s no doubt about it anymore: today’s music fans have caught full-blown Discman fever.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Gopher-boy B, Satoshin, Tehiro-naka, Ie-tan, Isetan, Gordian, sponge-type, dead Yoshiko, Quebec (word salad — reply makes no coherent sense)
Yeah, that's about right.
People buy them to support their favorite idol (oshi-katsu).
That's vinyl you're thinking of.
They're collector's items now, right?
Seems like that kind of thing exists for vinyl.
If there were a light-blue see-through CD like that,
I might actually consider buying one.
Lorde's clear-disc edition of Virgin was so see-through that some players wouldn't even recognize it.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/6ead/live/9ac77f00-57e8-11f0-9e22-e753cf2264c2.jpg.webp
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gded8p3z5o
You can't attach cover art thumbnails to those.
Go with m4a instead.
Wouldn't lossless compression work fine?
You really think these fast-forward-to-the-chorus-only Gen Z brats bother with something that inconvenient?
They probably don't even own a player to begin with.
There aren't any MD players left.
MDs would play sometimes and not other times, and they'd stop if you moved them around. So annoying.
Still haven't gotten rid of them, but out of 200 discs, I only ever play about 5 in the car.
Used to buy them 3-for-1000-yen from the bargain bin, purely for the cover art.
DREAMS COME TRUE 'THE BLACK ◯ ALBUM' feature | Masato Nakamura x Eishu. x Kenji Nomura unpack the appeal of CDs – Music Natalie feature/interview https://share.google/xF8gbjpbKxQ84uZig
Not like you're gonna read it anyway.
Knew it — just people's assumptions, lol
People say vinyl carries more information, but then why isn't there such a thing as a "music DVD"?
There are CDs that actually use Blu-ray discs.
The Cro-Magnons put one out like that.
No player to play them on, though.
In the future they'll probably be treated like out-of-place artifacts (ooparts).
Read about this a while back and confirmed it myself — there are various Chinese-made CD players on the market.
Unless it's a genuinely valuable CD, it's not gonna sell.
And that was purely for the collection — ripped it to my PC once and never listened to it again, lol.
Guess that's how it ended up.
People realized older music beats the boring stuff that's come out since Vocaloid took over.
I've been going back and relistening to '60s-'90s music.
Ended up just being in the way, so I sold it again — couldn't crank the volume anyway without bothering the neighbors.
I listen on a '89 Onkyo bubble-era system.
The sound quality really is on another level compared to streaming.
Kind of sad that today's kids can only listen to music through such weak, low-quality setups 👺
When it comes to actually listening to music, I think CDs are the strongest format.
With streaming you never know when a song might get pulled, and it costs money every month —
though the upside is unlimited access to a huge range of songs.
I'd heard CDs have a short lifespan, but one that old still plays?
Background and Key Points of Debate
The CD revival tends to get framed as an extension of the recent vinyl boom, but what stands out in Luminate’s survey is that CD growth actually outpaced vinyl’s 2.4% increase. Where the thread split was over whether this growth reflects “buying CDs to actually listen to music” versus “buying them for fan support (oshi-katsu) or as collectibles.” Many voiced doubt that Gen Z is really playing these CDs, pointing out that this doesn’t square with how few people still own playback equipment. Some posts attributed the trend to consumers in a specific country, but neither the article nor the thread offered any figures to back that up, so it remains speculation. Opinions on CD sound quality and durability vary a lot by individual, and the format wars — CDs vs. vinyl vs. cassettes vs. MiniDiscs — are a debate that’s been rehashed across generations.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Music] CDs Are Back — Why Are They in Demand Again?.”
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