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Wednesday, entertainment and music data compiler Luminate released their midyear report that "highlights changing consumer behaviors and the evolving economics driving music, television & film." Although data really bores me, there's some interesting things happening in this new report, including the news that CD sales are on a massive rise despite only half of Gen Z and millennials actually owning a CD player.
According the Luminate, CD sales surged 16%, up to 16.3 million units, while vinyl sales had a meager 2.4% spike. Despite this growth, vinyl is still sold more overall, but this shift supports Luminate's theory that superfans are gravitating towards a cheaper CD format as an "an affordable collectible." A big reason for the CD surge is due to K-pop fans — fans of BTS and ATEEZ are working overtime — but even if you remove K-pop releases from the data, CD sales still rose 6.7%.
The report states that "the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself." This makes sense given that young buyers were treating vinyl as a collector's item despite not necessarily owning turntables.
But the increase from last year is surprising considering that sales were on the decline last year. At this time last year, CDs were dropping sharply and vinyl was essentially flat. The RIAA’s 2025 mid-year report said CD sales were down 22% year over year, and vinyl sales down 1% YoY.
Other major takeaways from the report, which Billboard has nicely broken down, is that R&B and hip-hop have declined in popularity yet still dominate in streams. "Approximately one in every four streams today are for songs that fall into the R&B/hip-hop classification, but the genre’s share of listening has continued to decline year-over-year for the last few years." This loss for the genre has been picked up by "growing genres like dance/electronic, country and Latin."
There's also been a surge in Spanish-speaking music's popularity. English-language songs have made a small decline, down from 88.1% in 2025 to 87.1%. Now, nearly one out of every 10 US streams is in Spanish. Korean-language music is also steadily rising to a U.S. market stakes of 1.1%. Per Luminate, "It remains the third most popular language for music in America, owing to the continued strength of K-pop hits."
English (US) · 