K-Pop Drives CD Sales Surge

Los Angeles, CA (July 28, 2026)—The compact disc is enjoying something of a resurgence, according to Luminate’s recently published mid-year report, with U.S. sales soaring 16% in the first six months of this year, driven in no small part by K-pop.

CD sales are up 16%, to 16.3 million units in H1 2026, outselling vinyl, which grew by just 2.4%. (Although not in the data, unit sales of vinyl are likely greater, however, based on annual trends.) Interestingly, removing any K-pop projects from the total CD numbers reduces the U.S. sales bump to just 6.7% for H1 2026.

Luminate notes that approximately half of Gen-Z and millennial consumers who have purchased a CD do not own a CD player. It goes on to suggest that the format is being promoted as a collectible: “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.”

The CD’s sales surge was just one bullet point in the highlights of this year’s music trends to date. Also of note, R&B/hip-hop as a genre is slipping in its share of streaming, falling 1.6% in the past 12 months, although it still accounts for about 25% of all streams. Over the same period, dance/electronic, country and Latin music all gained streaming market share. Of those, dance music saw the biggest gains in U.S. on-demand streams, up nearly 19% year-over-year.

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The report also notes that streaming audiences are turning increasingly to catalog music, defined as anything over 18 months old. It singles out rock music, the second most-streamed genre in the U.S., noting it is dominated by older music. Luminate also reports that half of the top 10 dance/electronic songs in H1 2026 were released between 2015 and 2017.

Streaming figures for English-language songs ticked down slightly in the first half of 2026, with 9.4% of U.S. streams now in Spanish, driven largely by Bad Bunny’s popularity. Streaming in Korean, the third most popular language, remained just over 1% in H1 2026. And while American artists account for two-thirds of the U.S. streaming market, U.K. artists have edged up their share from 7% in 2025 to 7.8% in the first half of this year.

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It appears that there is an audience for AI-generated or AI-assisted music. According to Luminate, the highest on-demand audio streaming song in the U.S. is Breaking Rust’s “Livin’ on Borrowed Time,” a country song which has racked up 19 million streams in the U.S. Over half of U.S. musicians show “positive feelings and acceptance towards gen AI tools in music,” according to Luminate, compared to 35% for non-musicians.