According to the Recording Industry Association of America’s 2025 Year End Revenue Report, total recorded music sales in the U.S. hit an all-time high of $11.5B.
That revenue is heavily weighted toward streaming/paid subscriptions which gobble up more than 1/2 the pie as you can see in that handy graphic from the RIAA’s report.
Vinyl sales pushed past the $1 billion mark for the first time this century with 48.5 million new vinyl units sold with CDs moving 29.5 million units. I admit there was a time I considered getting a CD transport but after reviewing a few I decided—why the hell would I do that when I can just buy more records?
I view increased spending on music in any form as the most positive kind of news albeit without digging into the realities of streaming revenue and how it tends to pool at the top as opposed to trickling down to the people who actually make music. Case in point—ex-Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has an estimated net worth of $8.7 billion according to Forbes which is equal to 70% of total U.S. music sales for 2025 and it takes about 11.5 billion musicians to generate those sales (I made up that number but you get my point—an icky imbalance).
It’s also worth noting that the RIAA’s numbers do not account for used physical media sales and I know I personally spent a piece of pie’s-worth on used records last year. (burp)