If I see one more inane, insane article about the uptick in CD sales…

They’re merch, not carriers of music, as anyone on the inside will tell you. Hell, most kids today don’t even have access to a CD player, never mind a cassette deck or Walkman to play the ancient tape format the press kept telling us was back over the past couple of years.

What is it about our retro society that it refuses to accept progress? We’ve got a whole political party based on bringing us back to a theoretical past that was supposedly better, oldsters decrying the internet, even those who abhor all the technological improvements in automobiles… Yes, there was an article saying that customers are looking for tech free cars. I’m sure there are a few. Just like there are people who still don’t have smartphones or a streaming TV account. This reminds me of that old AOL news story saying the new fashion was a split tongue. I haven’t heard anything about this since, never mind never encountering someone with this self-inflicted physical deformity.

So Luminate, the renamed SoundScan, announced in its midyear report that CD sales were up 16%. That seems significant in the abstract, but percentage increases are secondary to sheer unit volume. Total CD sales were 16.3 million units. De minimis. Hell, there have been single albums that have sold more.

But it gets even worse…

Luminate. Charts. They exist for the industry itself. And the rules are constantly rewritten to satisfy that industry, forget truth. And the bottom line is physical sales are worth much more than streams on the chart. Even though streams represent the vast bulk of consumption, probably just about all of it…just because you bought physical product, that does not mean you listened to it, never mind over and over again.

So in order to get to number one, acts release their new albums in multiple physical formats, driving their hard core fans to purchase not only one, but multiples. This isn’t about music, but fandom. Collecting. No different from Beanie Babies or Pokemon cards. And it’s relatively inexpensive compared to the cost of tickets and merch at the show.

So…

BTS alone accounted for approximately 3.5% of the CD sales. There were four different CD versions of the Korean group’s last album, “ARIRANG.” As well as eleven different vinyl versions. But vinyl is much more expensive (and more profitable!) than CDs. So some fans will forgo vinyl for CD. But one thing is for sure, people are buying CDs of albums easily accessible on streaming platforms, oftentimes multiple CDs, as a badge of honor, a badge of fandom.

Now the interesting thing is if you take out K-pop, CD sales only increased by 6.7%. That’s right, almost ten points of the percentage increase, more than half of the bubble, was K-pop alone. Driven by multiple iterations of the same album.

Paul McCartney released six different CD versions of his latest album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane”… Overall, there were twenty six physical versions… How else is he going to get to number one? When it comes down to listening… The new album is trumped by scores of acts and tracks on streaming platforms.

Ditto Madonna. “Confessions II” was released in four different CD iterations. There were fifteen physical variants overall. It’s no surprise it entered the chart at number one. But the streams, the actual consumption, how almost all listening is done, are positively anemic. Not a single track breaks nine figures on Spotify. None of them break fifty million. None of them break thirty million. She’s got one track at 24 million and two others in double digit millions and that’s it. But if you read the press, you’d think that Madonna is back, she’s got this monster new album! Nothing could be further from the truth.

Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, Ollivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams…what do they all have in common? Their new albums all had multiple CD versions and they all debuted at number one! Hell, even the Rolling Stones released their new album in multiple CD versions. But the new Stones album, “Foreign Tongues,” which was released with such noise? Not a single cut, not one, has eight figures of streams on Spotify, that’s right, not a single one has ten million streams…not a single one even has five million streams!

But we are subjected to article after article, videos even, waxing rhapsodic about this return to the CD format, how the younger generations are finally waking up, abandoning streaming to listen to music the way their forefathers did.

I can’t stop laughing.

The only story here is how acts are manipulating the chart via multiple versions of their new album. That’s the entire story. Return to CD? Are you NUTS?

Today it’s all about convenience. Even more interestingly, most of these new albums can be listened to in better than CD quality on streaming platforms! CDs are from forty-plus years ago. Are you dying to drive a car from 1982? Hell, let’s get rid of Amazon and Door Dash and make you drive to the store to find out they don’t have the product you’re looking for. Oh, that’s another thing the older generations want to return to… Isn’t it so sad that physical retail is dying…

Oldsters hate change and the somnambulant media picks up on any top line news and runs with it, doing almost no investigation.

Then again, if we can’t even agree on political facts, what are the odds we can agree on something as trivial as CD sales. And they are trivial.

Let’s look at video games, which are still pooh-poohed by the educated. One game, Meccha Chameleon, which you probably have never even heard of, was released on June 10th and has already sold in excess of thirteen million copies, talk about a hit!

Record companies keep talking about superfans, trying to eke out more from them on streaming, something that has not come to pass despite years of hype, but one thing is for sure, just like paying handsomely for tickets to see their favorite acts live, fans will pay for multiple physical products to feel closer to the act.

We live in a streaming world. It’s all about consumption, not sales. Look forward, not back. Do not be swayed by clickbait headlines and the words of the ignorant. There is no CD listening revival. None whatsoever. Sorry.