For the Autumn edition of City AM The Magazine, Killian Faith-Kelly explores the CD revival and what it says about Gen Z listening habits
About a month ago, I read about some Lorde fans complaining that their CDs of her latest album weren’t working. And part of me thought, “That’s bad, these Lorde fans have paid money for those CDs, they should work.” But mostly, I thought, “Lorde fans are buying CDs?”
I’d assumed the CD had regressed to niche-within-niche status, the preserve of people who thought vinyl too mainstream, and maybe some old men in leather jackets who couldn’t find the 90s ambient electronica album they wanted as an LP. But Lorde fans? Buying a new album? Consider my world rocked. Who buys CDs in 2025? I went to find out.
According to Nigel House – co-founder of Rough Trade – there are two kinds of CD-buyers. One is, indeed, the older music-head attracted by the price and space-saving properties CDs offer over vinyl. Head into a Rough Trade tomorrow for a copy of, say, What’s The Story (Morning Glory), and the vinyl will set you back £32.99. The CD is £12.99, and the listening experience will be closer to the original recording than you’d get on any other medium.
The rise of the CD: less sexy, but more affordable, and they sound great
The other buyer, says House, is a young person who’s been sold on the “value of owning physical media” but finds the cost of the vinyl revival prohibitive. That or they’ve found their parents’ CD collection in the house and got into them from there.
This analysis bears out in my research. Loitering a few respectful feet from my local record shop’s CD section and pouncing on unsuspecting customers, I find Chris, in his fifties, who has around 700 CDs at home and says, at that scale, the price and volume difference with vinyl are multiplied to the point of enormous significance. He doesn’t have a Spotify account, and has no interest in streaming services – “I don’t want an algorithm telling me what music to listen to. I want my ears,” he says. He started out collecting music in CD form, so why switch to vinyl? Plus, his car’s got a CD player; try finding a car with a record player.
Encouragingly for the medium’s future, for every one guy in his fifties perusing the racks, there seem to be two teenagers. Like 17 year-old Isaac, from Swansea, who was pulled into CD-buying by a desire to collect Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series. “I’m tryna move towards listening to music on physical media, and vinyl’s crazy expensive, so I thought I’d collect that series on CD instead,” he says. “And they’re really great. I always thought vinyl was the best, but I’m starting to enjoy CD music a bit more than vinyl now.”
Or Anna, 18, who bought a CD player when she was into K-pop (CDs are a big part of the genre’s collect-it-all ethos). She has since grown out of K-pop but still listens to a combination of her mum’s CD collection and, increasingly, her own. “I just like physical stuff – I feel like it’s a bit more special. I do use digital as well, but I know Spotify doesn’t pay artists very well, so ethically, physical seems better.”
Matt Burr can attest to that. He’s the frontman of psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll band The Black Delta Movement, and says the margins they make on CDs easily trump any other medium. Pressing a CD will cost £1-2, and they’ll sell for £10-15. Vinyl costs £6-7 and sells for £20-25 – so best-case scenario they get fifteen times their outgoings back on CD, vs four times on vinyl. And streaming? “I’ve made more money looking down the back of the sofa,” he says. “Also, seeing your work in physical form… it’s not just vibrations anymore, you know?”
When I ask House if a CD revival might be in the pipeline, he insists “It’s not in the pipeline, it’s happening!” After years of decline, data from the British Phonographic Industry shows CD sales steadying, and a study from Key Production shows that 46 per cent of under-18s listen to CDs, whereas only 38 per cent listen to vinyl. House reckons Rough Trade’s CD sales are up 15-20 per cent year-on-year.
That said, it hasn’t enjoyed a revival like vinyl – House says the CD suffers from being a little less sexy, less instagrammable, less laden with nostalgia. CDs are “a bit more… utilitarian,” he says.
Those Lorde CDs weren’t working, it turns out, because they were entirely transparent, and this prevented some CD players from being able to read them. It’s almost like the medium was rejecting an attempt to prettify it. CDs aren’t cool, and they don’t want to be. But they sound great, they’re smaller than vinyl and they stave off the algorithm. And as far as owning physical music goes, they are that most gloriously democratic of things: relatively cheap.
In being affordable, CDs invite more people into the fold of physical music ownership, meaning less money for Spotify and more money for people who make music. Perhaps it’s time to reassess those ugly, shiny, compact little discs.
Killian Faith-Kelly is a freelance writer covering everything from property to fitness and popular culture