Vinyl LPs continued to increase their sales both in the US and the UK with a 61.2% and 23.2% year on year increase respectively. UK’s CD market share (as a percentage of total revenue) CD sales in the UK during 2021 did not enjoy this uplift and there was a 10.5% decline in the number of CDs sold in 2021 compared to 2020 according to the ERA. This compares to their peak in 1997 when 942.5 million copies were sold. In 2021 the number of CDs sold increased by 47.7% to reach 46.6 million items but with only a 20.9% increase in value representing some 3.9% of total music sales. In 2021 sales of music on physical media in the US were 11% of the total a significant increase on 2020 when sales had fallen to 9%.

However, from the beginning of the early 2000s CDs were increasingly being replaced by other forms of digital storage and distribution with the result that by 2010 the number of audio CDs being sold in the US had dropped to about 50% of their peak. Developed by Philips and Sony, sales of CDs grew quickly and by 2004 cumulative worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs and 200 billion by 2007. The first commercial Compact Disc (CD) was released in 1982 and the CD was planned as the successor to the vinyl record.

SOURCE: RIAA – The Rise and Fall of CD sales volumes in US 1983-2021

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