Weirdly, this years also saw overall physical music sales grew for the first time since 1996.

For a while now we have noted that vinyl sales were increasing but CD’s also increasing suggests that streaming is taking a kick.  

Physical music sales exploded to the tune of $1.65 billion in the U.S. last year, according to the RIAA data.

CD sales grew to $584.2 million nationally last year, up more than $100 million from 2020. The CD was the music industry's leading format in the 1990s, peaking at $13.2 billion in annual sales in 2000. By comparison, 2021 vinyl sales increased to $1 billion annually, up from $643.9 million.

What appears to be happening is that people are starting to reject the idea of “not owning” something and want to collect music off-line.