CD sales rise 16% as John Lewis reports CD player searches jump 96%

CD sales are up 16% in a report on trends in music and film this year, while John Lewis separately reported a 96% rise in searches for CD players since July.

Those figures mark renewed interest in a physical format. The reasons vary, from the practical fit of a disc to the direct support a purchase can provide for smaller bands.

A collection measured in thousands

Andrew Wales, 67, has well over 10,000 CDs in his London home. He says his wife is very considerate about the collection. Discs occupy the room where he speaks and have spread into the next bedroom and the corridor. The format lets that quantity fit inside his two-bedroom flat rather than a country mansion.

Wales says he does not need Spotify. He prefers owning music in physical form and has always done so. Much of the classical music he buys is available only on CD.

He bought his first disc in 1991, John Scofield’s Meant to Be, around the same time that he bought his first CD player, after finding LPs increasingly shoddy in pressing and presentation. Their limitations meant that songs or tracks sometimes appeared on a CD release but not on its LP counterpart. He says that gap persists today.

Wales also owns:

• About 2,000 LPs.
• A few hundred cassettes.
• An increasing number of Blu-rays.

He does not remain committed to one format.

When records become impractical

Gabriela Crowley, 32, of San Jose, California, started listening to CDs only in the past year. Her parents had a tonne of them, and her father played them in the car until he bought an iPod. By the time Crowley was 18, the shift away from physical media had begun.

Her return to physical music began with the vinyl revival, but after their baby arrived, she and her husband found their records too bulky and inconvenient to play often. They had shared his large record collection as a hobby. Her father-in-law gave them an old CD player, and they now use it every day.

Crowley describes a CD collection as a remedy for the paradox of choice created by streaming. Instead of facing endless options, she becomes familiar with what she owns. She does not have autoplay or AI-generated playlists imposed on her.

Buying music where the money goes

Neil Cumming, 53, of Gloucester, bought his first CD in 1988 and has collected ever since. His several hundred discs include classical, folk, rock and blues. He buys mostly to support small indie and folk bands, which he says do not make much money.

Cumming buys directly from the bands when he can, giving them a larger share of his money than streaming would, and values the certainty of owning a recording permanently rather than renting it through an app. “Streaming means you are basically renting the music, and it can disappear from the streaming sites,” he says.

He enjoys the ritual of selecting a CD and putting it in the machine rather than pressing play on an app. He does not oppose streaming, and uses it to try music before buying or find new acts. In the evening, a CD with a mug of tea or a glass of whisky satisfies him more.

The album as a self-directed sequence

Asha Varadharajan, 65, of Toronto, buys albums for their narrative and aesthetic arc. She rejects music as background noise unless she is dancing while vacuuming. Her CD player has been in use since 1999. It holds five CDs at a time, and she chooses their order to build her own arc.

Friends have introduced her to artists she might never have heard otherwise, while she believes the patience and persistence required to listen to a CD make songs memorable. Streaming, she says, makes music ephemeral. “I think algorithms make everything predictable, but everybody’s taste is kind of random,” she says.

She also finds CDs hard to damage. As a child, she feared scratching albums because she could not place the needle accurately without her hand shaking.

Cheap discs and a familiar ritual

Ed, 63, of London, bought his first CDs in 1986. They were Genesis’s Invisible Touch and Level 42’s World Machine. His interest has waxed and waned, but he has never stopped buying.

At first, CDs promised permanence. Listeners could drill holes in them, apply jam and still play them. Ed disliked their bright, shiny sound compared with vinyl, but over the past two years he has bought more because their prices seem almost throwaway beside vinyl’s excessive costs.

He says music on CD gives him something tactile and tangible. A good digital source now engages him as much as a good record player.

What does the CD comeback change for listeners?

For buyers, the practical change is specific: a CD offers ownership, direct support for musicians, a chosen sequence and prices that can undercut vinyl without rejecting every digital service. Streaming still helps Cumming discover acts, while Crowley finds a physical collection easier to navigate than an endless catalogue.

Whether that combination produces a lasting shift among new listeners or simply extends older habits remains untested. The next phase will show whether interest in CD players and sales persists beyond the current rise.