The story of
Compact Discs
U.S. Recorded Music Revenue · 1973–2019 · RIAA Data
Scroll to explore
The story of
U.S. Recorded Music Revenue · 1973–2019 · RIAA Data
Scroll to explore
Every decade brought a new way to carry music. Each format promised better sound, more convenience, or both until the next one made it obsolete. Hover over a format to see what it meant.
In 1983 the CD had 0.5% of the U.S. market. By 2002 it owned 98% of physical music revenue. Then services like Napster, iTunes, and Spotify overtook it in under a decade. Drag to scrub through time.
Market Share by Format — Scrub Through Time
CDs launched in 1983 at $21.50 per disc, which was wildly expensive. Over two decades the price fell, but never enough to stop people buying hundreds of millions. Scrub to see what that money was worth in today's dollars.
Year
1983
selected year
Avg. CD Price
$21.50
at time of sale
In 2024 dollars
$55.19
inflation-adjusted
Units Sold
0.8M
shipped that year
Average CD Price per Unit — Nominal vs. Inflation-Adjusted
Streaming compresses audio by throwing data away. Premium streaming at 320 kbps keeps less than a quarter of what a CD stores. Each dot below represents a unit of audio data, see what gets discarded.
Every dot is audio data — dim dots are what streaming discards
* CD lossless PCM at 1,411 kbps vs. premium streaming at 320 kbps. Streaming discards ~77% of the original signal through lossy compression.
Streaming won the mainstream. But something surprising is happening: physical media has recently been growing again. Vinyl is outselling CDs in the U.S. for the first time since the 1980s. This means the CD may not be dead. With its high audio quality features, it might only be a little while longer unitl they make a come back too.