A guest post by\u00a0Tony van Veen<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0Disc Makers Blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n In recent weeks, there have been a number of breathless articles and reports about the \u201cCD revival\u201d that started in 2021.<\/p>\n In \u201cIs the CD Revival an Actual Thing?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0Pitchfork<\/em>\u2019s Marc Hogan reports:<\/p>\n Although millennials may have soured on CDs during the 2000s, the format has devotees among Gen Z. Andrea Cacho, a 20-year-old sophomore at New York University, tells me that she and her friends are \u201con the CD wave.\u201d Cacho, a WNYU DJ from Puerto Rico, says she bought her first CD \u2026 a year ago, after arriving at school. She now has 62 CDs spanning punk, metal, screamo, pop, and Christian music. \u2026 \u201cI was tired of discovering music through YouTube or Spotify,\u201d Cacho tells me. \u201cI wanted to be surprised.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In \u201cJewel-Box Heroes: Why the CD Revival Is Finally Here<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Rob Sheffield muses that \u201c\u2026CDs work. They just do. You pop in the disc, press play, music booms out. They delivered the grooves so efficiently, they became the most popular format ever. If you\u2019re looking to focus on something cool for an hour, without getting up to flip sides every 20 minutes, the compact disc has what you want, bigger and louder. It gives you room to get lost inside the music.\u201d<\/p>\n And indeed, it looks like industry unit sales of CDs were up a modest two percent in 2021. The first time in 17 years that there was any growth in CDs. Great, right?<\/p>\n Then, there\u2019s a post on the blog\u00a0Dada Drummer Almanach<\/a>\u00a0that says, no, there\u2019s no CD revival. It\u2019s mostly just Adele\u2019s album \u2014 which sold over 900,000 units, by the way \u2014 and that album pushed CD sales up for the year. And so, they\u2019re somewhat-dubious, reasoning that if Adele\u2019s CD sales were excluded from market data, CD units continue to be down about two percent in 2021.<\/p>\n Up, down, which is it? And does it actually matter to anyone other me, because I happen to run a CD manufacturing company? Well, I\u2019ve done some digging, and I\u2019ll tell you what I found when I focus specifically on the independent artist; the unsigned artist, like you, who is releasing their own CDs, which is a category no one has reported on, mostly because there\u2019s no data available.<\/p>\n The conclusions I\u2019ve come to are pretty interesting.<\/p>\n 1. The vast majority of self-released CDs are not tracked by Nielsen Soundscan or anyone else.<\/p>\n 2. Unsigned artists represent\u00a022 percent of all CDs sold in the US!<\/strong><\/p>\n 3. For emerging artists, CD sales have declined much less over the past decade than for major artists.<\/p>\n 4. CD sales among DIY artists are up slightly in 2021.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s dig into each of these points<\/p>\n DIY artists have always had a hard time getting their physical music products \u2014 i.e.,\u00a0CDs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0vinyl<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 stocked in stores and at distributors. And that\u2019s because retailers just don\u2019t have confidence that your CDs will actually sell through.<\/p>\n And of course, over the past 20 years, the number of retail stores selling CDs has decreased drastically. So, independent artists sell the majority of their CDs at shows to make a few extra bucks when they perform. Plus, of course, some artists sell their CDs on Bandcamp and their own websites.<\/p>\n But it seems pretty clear to me that, with most self-released CDs being sold at concerts, there is no sales tracking for the vast majority of discs sold. They\u2019re mostly at small venues that don\u2019t report to Nielsen Soundscan and most indie artists just don\u2019t bother to report their live music CD sales to anybody.<\/p>\n This claim comes from our own data. Let\u2019s check out this graph representing the US sales of albums by format as reported by Nielsen Soundscan.<\/p>\n Here we see that the CD unit sales, in green, did indeed go up industry-wide in 2021 after a pretty long slide over the past decade. It\u2019s actually more than a decade, but the chart gives us data from 2011 to 2021. We also see that vinyl, in black, has grown significantly \u2014 from almost nothing a decade ago \u2014 and that downloads (purple) are continuing to decline.<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s what\u2019s interesting. According to Nielsen Soundscan, there were 40.6 million CDs sold in the US in 2021. In 2021, Disc Makers, alone, sold almost 12 million CDs to unsigned, independent artists. And if you agree with my first point, that most of those indie CD sales are not represented in the 40.6 million that are tracked by Nielsen, that means that the total CD market in the US last year is closer to 52 million units, and our 12 million make up a bit over 22 percent of that 52 million.<\/p>\n And while\u00a0Disc Makers<\/a>\u00a0is by far the biggest manufacturer for independent artists, we\u2019re not the only one out there, so the actual number of CDs made for DIY artists is even larger than that. That means one in five CDs sold last year in the US was self-released. That\u2019s a pretty impressive stat and it shows the loyalty that fans have towards emerging artists and how eagerly they will support them by buying their discs and their merch at concerts.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at my final points, that\u00a0CD sales for emerging artists declined less than they did for major artists over the past decade<\/em>\u00a0and that\u00a0CD orders for unsigned artists were up in 2021.<\/em>\u00a0For starters, take another look at the sales chart above. You can see the downward arc of the curve for CD sales is flattening industry-wide. In fact, you can see that unit sales declined from around 230 million CD units in 2011 to 40.6 million in 2021. That\u2019s an 82 percent decline in CD sales for the US music industry over 10 years.<\/p>\n But what about the indie artist? First, I\u2019m going to make two assumptions.<\/p>\n Number one: Disc Makers is the only factory that works directly with emerging artists and is by far the largest CD manufacturer for indie artists in the US. And while we have nowhere near 100 percent of that market, I\u2019m going to assume the trends we are experiencing are a reasonable representation of the trends that the overall industry is experiencing for DIY artists.<\/p>\n My second assumption is that looking at\u00a0units manufactured<\/em>\u00a0for unsigned artists may not be the right metric. At least not the optimal metric. After all, we don\u2019t know how many of those discs that we\u2019ve made for emerging artists are actually sold to fans at concerts versus still sitting in a carton in a basement versus having been handed out as promos, etc.<\/p>\n What I think might be a better indicator of how the CD market is trending for DIY artists is to look at CD order trends \u2014 that is, the number of new orders\u00a0and reorders<\/em>combined for disc manufacturing that we receive at Disc Makers. This way, we\u2019re looking at both new CDs being manufactured and the number of times an existing CD title sold enough units to be reordered.<\/p>\n Check out this chart of Disc Makers CD orders for the past 11 years, from 2011 to 2021.<\/p>\n You can see the\u00a0number of CD orders<\/em>\u00a0manufactured by Disc Makers each year in blue bars and then, in orange, you can see some distinct trend lines. So let me make a few obvious observations.<\/p>\n Yes, over the past 11 years, there have been some notable declines, which shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone, right? Over this time period, Disc Makers CD orders have declined by about 44 percent, as compared to the industry declines of 82 percent. That means that CD sales in the \u201cmainstream\u201d music industry declined about twice as fast as CD sales for unsigned artists.<\/p>\n In my opinion, this is a clear result of the fact that streaming pays so little \u2014 indie artists still have to rely on the revenue stream from physical media. It\u2019s interesting how CD orders held relatively flat from 2011 to 2016, despite the industry shift to download sales and streams during that time period, which points to the strength of the CD format as a revenue generator at concerts. After all, you can\u2019t sell a download or a stream at your concerts.<\/p>\n Now, you can see that after 2016, when\u00a0streaming<\/em>\u00a0had become the dominant revenue model industry-wide, we did see some notable declines in CD orders. However, orders started to stabilize in 2019. And then in 2020, the pandemic and venue shutdown created the biggest percentage drop in orders the format had ever seen, which supports my position that most unsigned artists\u2019 CDs are sold at concerts.<\/p>\n Finally, there was indeed a modest two and a half percent CD order growth from DIY artists in 2021, which mirrors the two percent or so CD unit growth for the broader music industry. Although, in all fairness, we are comparing that growth to the worst year in CD sales history.<\/p>\n So, is there a CD revival? Well, one swallow does not make a spring. It feels a bit too early to call it a revival, but the format declines have certainly slowed way down and they seem to want to start slowly rising, as implausible as that might have seemed just a couple years ago.<\/p>\n There is also some anecdotal evidence that the decline of the CD format is coming to an end. My friend Sean Rutkowski, who for many years ran a vinyl pressing plant called Independent Record Pressing about half-an-hour up the road from Disc Makers, mentioned that the recent trends he has noticed for CDs at retail \u2014 at mom and pop record stores, used record stores, etc. \u2014 are starting to look like the trends he was seeing for vinyl way back in 2008, just as that format started slowly growing again.<\/p>\n Prices for used CDs in stores are rising. The selection is getting poorer because more people are picking through the racks, and used CD players are harder to find at thrift stores. This sentiment is actually echoed by the\u00a0Pitchfork<\/em>\u00a0article mentioned at the top of this post. In fact, in addition to the vinyl TikTok that\u2019s become a phenomenon, there is also now CD TikTok.<\/p>\n So my conclusion is the CD revival may not be quite here yet, but it\u2019s right around the corner. And you, dear artist, can say you were right there when it started. So don\u2019t wait too long to place that order before our presses fill all up again!<\/p>\n If you have an opinion on this topic, please leave a comment below. I\u2019ll be sure to respond.<\/p>\n Watch more great videos on the\u00a0Disc Makers YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Tony van Veen\u00a0<\/strong>is the CEO of DIY Media Group, the parent company of\u00a0Disc Makers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0BookBaby<\/a>. As a college student, he played in indie bands, created his own LPs, cassettes, and t-shirts, and sold them at shows. Today, he collects CDs, vinyl LPs, and concert t-shirts to support the artists he loves.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Hypebot) — CD sales are up for the first time in over a decade, and we take a dive into the DIY market to explore the details of what\u2019s being hailed as a CD revival. A guest post by\u00a0Tony van Veen\u00a0of\u00a0Disc Makers Blog. In recent weeks, there have been a number of breathless articles and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":114343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_stc_notifier_status":"sent","_stc_notifier_sent_time":"2022-03-11 13:33:01","_stc_notifier_request":false,"_stc_notifier_prevent":false,"_stc_subscriber_keywords":"","_stc_subscriber_search_areas":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,22,108,77],"tags":[15511],"class_list":["post-116558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-industry_news","category-opinion-news","category-techn-news","tag-cds-obsolete"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoes one artist make a trend?<\/h3>\n
Most self-released CDs are not tracked by Nielsen Soundscan<\/h3>\n
Unsigned artists represent 22 percent of all CDs sold in the US<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sp-ao.shortpixel.ai\/client\/to_webp,q_lossy,ret_img,w_715,h_511\/https:\/\/www.hypebot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/USAlbumSales.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nBut, is the CD market actually seeing a revival?<\/h3>\n
The DIY market tells a different story<\/h3>\n
![\"CD](\"https:\/\/blog.discmakers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/CDOrders.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nI think the revival is just around the corner<\/h3>\n
\n