San Francisco, March 14 For CD lovers, here is some good news as after nearly two decades, CD sales rose from $483.2 million to $584.2 million last year and shipments went up from 31.6 million in 2020 to 46.6 million in 2021 in the US.
According to data published by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), LP Vinyl record sales have also been steadily increasing, and hit 39.7 million units in the US in 2021, bringing in $1 billion in revenue.
Meanwhile, CD and vinyl album sales combined made up less than 11 per cent of revenue for the music industry.
CD sales enjoyed year-over-year growth for the first time since 2004, reports Axios.
"Combined with the decade-long vinyl sales explosion, overall physical music sales grew for the first time since 1996," the report noted.
Online music streaming led by players like Spotify and Apple Music remains the king and paid subscriptions made up 57.2 per cent of revenue at $8.6 billion, while ad-supported streams brought in $1.8 billion, in 2021.
The CD was the music industry's leading format in the 1990s, peaking at $13.2 billion in annual sales in 2000.
The compact disc (CD) data storage format was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings.
In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured.
It was then released in October 1982 and branded as Digital Audio Compact Disc.
At the time of the technology's introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard disk drive, which would typically hold 10 MB.
In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs, and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.
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