The decline in disc sales in the US is stabilising, note industry groups, physical media distributors and sellers. Photo / Ben Tomsett
Dan Levine loves watching his guests light up when they see his DVD-lined bookcases and drawers in his Brooklyn apartment.
It’s as if they’ve travelled back in time to 2006, he said.
“It is a really powerful thing to show that I still take pride in owning things that make me happy,” Levine said.
The 30-year-old estimates he has over 500 DVDs. And that’s not including his modest collections of CDs, VHS tapes, vinyl records, cassettes and 8-tracks.
Since the 2010s, streaming has dominated media consumption, and with that, sales of DVDs and CDs have sunk.
And yet discs are still circulating in retail, and in some cases, demand is reviving - particularly from collectors.
Discogs, an online marketplace for physical music where users can also catalogue their personal collections, saw CD purchases increase 8% so far this year over last year.
The trend is driven by Gen Z looking for the novelty of “vintage” media on discs as well as collectors and millennials itching to ditch their pricey streaming services, experts say.
They also want to exercise true ownership of their media and better support the artists they love.
And it can be cheaper to buy a physical DVD for US$3-$5 than to buy or rent the digital version. Some buyers hope their collections will also grow in value.
“What’s driving the growth right now is the type of people who go and spend a lot of time buying physical music are also hoping that the music might appreciate over time,” said Lloyd Starr, chief operating officer at Discogs.
Database users adding CDs to their digital collection on Discogs increased 14% over last year and 26% compared to 2022, Starr said.
And if their “want list” - a tool to track what albums users are looking to buy - is any indication, he expects sales to keep growing.
This year, 12.7 million CDs were added, a 47% increase year over year.
Subscribers to the CD_Collectors subreddit have soared more than 820% since 2020.
More broadly, the decline in disc sales is stabilising, note industry groups, physical media distributors and sellers.
Sales of DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K UHD Blu-rays, for example, fell just 3% in the third quarter over last year, according to the trade organisation Digital Entertainment Group, compared to almost 26% in the previous year.
And CD unit sales in 2024 increased 1.5% year over year, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
To be sure, CDs and DVDs remain a niche market compared to other media - vinyl sales, for example, have surpassed CD sales since 2023, according to RIAA.
Disc sales could also be skewed as retailers in recent years recalibrated how much inventory they sell in stores, according to DEG.
And sales are highly dependent on how many popular films or albums are released on discs each year, industry experts said.
Collecting can be more than the hope of a future fortune.
Rather, it’s a manifestation of the owner’s “relationship to cultural taste”, said Ted Striphas, chair of the department of media studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“Being able to physically display media artifacts tells people something about who you are and your identity,” he said.
“And that just does not translate into the world of streaming.”
These forces have motivated Alliance Entertainment to stay in the business. The wholesaler and distributor of physical and streaming media saw many peers “give up”, said chairman Bruce Ogilvie.
“We never felt physical media would go away,” he added.
Alliance, which benefitted from the resurgence of vinyl records, acknowledges that DVDs and CDs probably won’t ride the same wave.
“We’re not looking to go back to the heyday,” said Tim Hinsley, senior vice-president of retail sales.
Alliance is focused instead on serving the niche audiences still looking to buy CDs and DVDs. And they’re going where the customers are, such as Amazon, Temu and eBay.
Although the big box chains Alliance works with - like Target, Walmart and Best Buy - have either shrunk or eliminated their in-store selection, shoppers can still find CDs and DVDs on their websites.
Thrift and record stores and niche online marketplaces can be even more popular among ardent collectors.
For Robin Johnsen and her family, the DVD and CD aisle at a thrift store is their favourite section.
Her son, Max, 14, and daughter, Saylor, 15, don’t have smartphones or unfettered access to streaming services, so they love the thrill of adding to their collections.
“Part of it is the ownership of it - like we don’t actually own whatever is on Netflix or on Hulu,” said Johnsen, a hairdresser who lives in Roopville, a farm town in west Georgia.
It’s also enabled them “to appreciate music and cinema in a different way”.
Both her children have CDs and DVDs on their Christmas lists. Max, whose room has stacks of DVDs under his bed, requested the Anime TV show Invincible, while Saylor wants Taylor Swift’s Reputation and albums from Deftones and Sublime.
“Saylor asks for CDs because she likes the inserts, she likes the posters, she likes to read the lyrics,” Johnsen, 39, said.
“That’s all the stuff I like to do and we’re desperately trying to give them a taste of childhood because it’s fleeting.”
Starr, of Discogs, said Gen Z is a growing customer base for CDs.
They’re intrigued by a medium that’s “foreign” to them, he said. “For the younger generation, it’s vintage.”
Pop stars like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga are leaning in, releasing their albums on CD and even rolling out special editions.
The industry also recognises the value of the collectors’ market, Starr noted, citing the release of elaborate box sets for legacy artists like Miles Davis, the Beatles and Thelonious Monk.
“No doubt there is this huge cultural tension between AI and analogue, and we see it especially when people are talking about Spotify,” Starr said.
“Music is more accessible than it’s ever been before … but that kind of stripped us of our musical identity at the same time.”
Mark Leitner, 67, has been building his CD collection since he graduated from law school in 1985.
He now has about 14,000 CDs stored in custom wooden bookshelves and rotating tower racks in his Milwaukee apartment. Although the lawyer had a Spotify subscription for years, he prefers scanning his collection and spotting an album he hadn’t thought of in years.
“Everything usually has a story behind it,” he said.
“One thing that really makes me elated is when I can sit down and listen … and it can take me to wherever that record has taken me before and maybe to some new places.”
It’s hard to re-create that same ritual when you’re scrolling through a streaming service, he said.
Erica Hill, 36, finds a special kind of satisfaction in “feeding the machine” with a CD or DVD. “It’s the tactile nature of putting a disc in a drive,” she said.
Hill, who works for a documentary filmmaker and as a projectionist at a theatre in Boston, also likes knowing that she won’t have to hunt for her favourite show as streaming services consistently trade licences.
“I’ve watched the entire series of Cheers two or three times, which is 11 seasons,” she said.
“They switch streaming platforms all the time, so having that physical copy is really nice.”
There’s also the unique experience of lending DVDs and CDs to friends, an act Hill says makes for a more meaningful connection than just telling someone to watch a show or listen to an album.
Levine frequently has friends over for movie nights, encouraging them to scan his collection of more than 500 DVDs to choose what they watch.
“It’s crazy how probably two years ago I was getting looks and [asked], ‘Why are you doing this?’” Levine said.
“And now it’s switched to, ‘Oh yeah, I got a Blu-ray player.’”
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