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Yes—but the evidence is strongest for music, not for every kind of physical media. In the U.S., vinyl revenue rose for an eighteenth straight year in 2024, and CD revenue edged up. Cassettes attract some buyers, while print books remain widely read without a recent surge. Available video-game spending totals do not tell us whether physical game sales are growing.
Which physical media formats are making a comeback?
The clearest recent sales evidence comes from U.S. recorded music. The Recording Industry Association of America’s 2024 year-end report, published in March 2025, puts physical music revenue at $2.0 billion, up 5% from 2023. That is a measure of recorded-music revenue—not all physical media—and the report’s figures are wholesale revenue and shipments, not a count of owners or listeners. RIAA’s 2024 Year-End Revenue Report.
Vinyl: the strongest sustained growth
RIAA reports vinyl revenue of $1.4 billion in 2024, up 7% year over year and marking an eighteenth consecutive year of growth. Vinyl albums also outsold CDs by units for a third year in a row. RIAA’s summary rounds the figures to 44 million vinyl albums and 33 million CDs; its detailed table lists 43.6 million LP/EP shipments and 32.9 million CD shipments. Those are two presentations of the same report, so the rounded summary and detailed figures should not be mixed as if they were identical precision.
CDs: a modest gain, not a vinyl-sized surge
CD revenue rose 1% to $541 million in 2024, according to RIAA. The growth is real but small beside vinyl’s longer run of gains. The detailed table reports $541.1 million for CDs and $1,442.9 million for LP/EPs.
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Cassettes: signs of interest, but a different kind of evidence
A June 2024 Futuresource Consulting survey of more than 10,000 audio hardware owners in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, and China found that one in four respondents had bought a cassette in the prior year; the proportion among Gen Z respondents was nearly twice as high. This is reported buying behavior among audio hardware owners across five countries, not a population-wide U.S. sales measure or a comparable revenue series. Futuresource’s principal analyst James Duvall said, “The fascination with physical media continues to take hold.” Futuresource’s survey summary.
RIAA’s “Other Physical” category also shows that physical music is not limited to vinyl and CDs: it includes formats such as cassettes, music DVDs and Blu-ray music videos, MiniDiscs, SACD, and DVD-Audio. But the category totaled $21.7 million in 2024, far below vinyl and CDs, and does not establish that each included format is growing.
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Are people buying physical formats—and using them?
Buying, owning playback equipment, and actually using a format are different things. In the same Futuresource survey, 91% of vinyl buyers owned a turntable, but more than half said they did not listen to all the vinyl they bought. That finding applies to the surveyed audio hardware owners, not to all vinyl buyers everywhere. It suggests why sales or ownership alone cannot tell the whole story: collecting and listening need not move in lockstep.
Do print books count as part of the resurgence?
Print books belong in a broad discussion of physical media, but recent use figures point to durability rather than a fresh boom. Pew Research Center found that 64% of U.S. adults had read a print book in the 12 months before its October 2025 survey. In the same period, 31% had read an e-book and 26% had listened to an audiobook. Pew says print reading has changed little since 2021, while the share reading print was 72% in 2011. These figures measure reported reading, not book sales. Pew Research Center’s findings on reading formats.
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What about physical video games?
The available headline U.S. video-game spending figure cannot answer whether physical game sales are rising or falling. The Entertainment Software Association’s 2025 total combines physical and digital full-game purchases with downloadable content, microtransactions, subscriptions, hardware, and accessories; its final figures were revised in March 2026. Since the measure bundles unlike categories, it is not a physical-games sales statistic. ESA’s 2025 U.S. video-game spending report.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to read the physical-media trend
- Strongest growth evidence: U.S. vinyl revenue, with an eighteen-year growth streak reported by RIAA.
- Positive but modest: U.S. CD revenue, up 1% in 2024.
- Evidence of niche buying interest: cassette purchases in Futuresource’s survey of audio hardware owners across five countries.
- Broad continued use, not a new upswing: print-book reading among U.S. adults, according to Pew.
- Unresolved from the cited total: physical video-game sales, because ESA combines them with digital content and other spending.
So the story is wider than DVDs, but “physical media is back” is too broad to describe every format. Vinyl has the clearest sustained sales growth; CDs have a small recent gain; cassettes show survey-based interest; print books remain common; and the cited game-spending data cannot establish a physical-game trend.
Quick Recap
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