We Killed the CD. Now We’re Bringing It Back From the Dead.

Napster almost put physical music to bed for good. Suddenly, you could have thousands of songs without a shelf, a case or even a CD player. Downloads took over, streaming finished the job, and those little silver discs became something many of us couldn’t wait to get rid of. Now the funny thing is happening: the CD is coming back from the dead.

The stars seem to be aligning around music again. Vinyl continues to grow, CD sales are surging, younger listeners are discovering physical music in thrift stores, and the analog lifestyle is giving people another reason to want something they can actually hold. In the U.S., CD sales jumped 45.7% in the first half of 2026 to 17.5 million units, while vinyl reached 26.5 million. Streaming is still king, but physical music clearly isn’t ready for the grave.

The thrift store may be one of the strangest parts of this resurrection. Research from RTi found that Gen Z is buying CDs from thrift stores and secondhand bins while continuing to stream the same music. The CD isn’t replacing Spotify. It’s doing something streaming can’t do: giving people something they actually own. We thought we were cleaning out the past. Turns out we were stocking the shelves for the next generation.

The analog lifestyle fits neatly into this too. After growing up with smartphones, endless playlists and algorithms deciding what comes next, there is something appealing about putting on an album and simply listening. A CD doesn’t send a notification. A record doesn’t interrupt you with a recommendation. You choose something, press play and stay with it for a while. The broader return to physical music is also bringing back some of the hardware that disappeared with it.

As CD buyer Michael Swalberg told The Washington Post, “CDs are not just about ownership for me, it’s about addressing a fundamental need to interact.” And maybe that’s the part we forgot. We made music easier to access, but somewhere along the way we removed some of the ritual of actually having it.

There is just one little problem with bringing the CD back: you need something to play it on. We spent years removing CD players from cars, computers and home stereos, so now we’re resurrecting the music while having to resurrect some of the machinery that played it. That isn’t just nostalgia talking. John Lewis reported that searches for CD players jumped 96% since July, with portable players particularly popular and some models selling out.

And no, I still refuse to accept the cassette tape.

Sure, making mixtapes was fun, and there was something satisfying about carefully writing the songs on the little case. But let’s not romanticize everything. Remember when the tape got loose and you had to stick a pencil in it and wind the damn thing back in? That wasn’t an analog lifestyle. That was unpaid mechanical labour.

Time has proven there is room for all three: streaming, vinyl and CD. Streaming gives us practically everything. Vinyl gives us the big, beautiful physical experience. The CD gives us an affordable way to actually own an album, whether it’s a new release or a two-dollar thrift-store discovery.

We killed the CD, killed the player, dumped the evidence at the thrift store and moved on.

But if you’re going to kill something, get rid of the evidence.

We didn’t.

The evidence is sitting in thrift-store bins, record shops and people’s basements, waiting for somebody to press play.

Long live rock and roll!