Tyler Woodward: Vinyl came back. CDs are coming back. Damn, even cassettes are somehow growing again. And I I don't think this is purely nostalgia at this point. I think people are starting to remember that owning something is, well, actually pretty nice. And for the generations that never grew up in the original CD, vinyl, or cassette era, like the Gen Zs and the Gen Alphas. They're realizing that yeah, these subscriptions are getting a little expensive and actually owning, having a physical piece of media, whatever you choose, vinyl, cassette, or CD, is actually pretty nice. Nobody can take it away from you and nobody can raise the price. Me personally, I absolutely love that CDs are making a comeback. I love it. Because for years the story was. You know, sort of settled. Physical media was dead. That's whatever one proclaimed. physical media's dead. Throw away your CDs. Get rid of all that crap. Pull up an app on your phone. Grab the Spotify, grab the Apple Music, YouTube music, whatever. Streaming had won. Throw away the jewel cases again, get rid of the shelves, put everything in the cloud and pay somebody ten, fifteen, twenty dollars a month until the end of time. Except physical media. Well, it didn't really die. Vino came roaring back. Now CDs are growing again. Even cassette tapes are growing in popularity again. Cassette tapes in 2026. That rules. This is the Tyler Woodward Project. I'm Tyler. I'm a broadcast engineer in the upper Midwest. How's it going? Now I want to talk about. Why people are buying this stuff again? What they're paying for it. Why I think ownership is becoming attractive again. And then I want to ask a question. If vinyl, CDs, and cons and cassettes can come back, can broadcast radio do it too? As always, these are my opinions. Everything here is from my point of view. Let's start with the fun part, shall we? Through the end of September, September 24th, this year, 2026, Americans had bought 31.4 million vinyls this year. That's up three percent. CDs were at twenty-four point two million. That's up. 11%. Even cassette tapes were up ten percent to three hundred and twenty thousand copies. Overall, physical media album sales were up six point three percent from this same point last year. People are buying this stuff again, and CDs are having well, a hell of a year in just the first half. Of twenty twenty six, CD sales jumped sixteen percent to sixteen point three million units sold. Now, there is an interesting part of that number that's worth diving into. K pop. Well, if you haven't heard of K pop, go YouTube it. K pop has turned the physical album into something closer. It's more of a collector's item. And they're doing a hell of a job at it. A release might have multiple physical editions, photo books, photo cards, and different packaging. Fans aren't necessarily buying the CD just because they need a disc to hear the song. They're collecting something connected back to the artist. That alone has absolutely helped CD sales. But there's a part I think that's more interesting. Luminate says that even if you remove the K pop sales completely, you know, remove those numbers, US CD sales were up still by six point seven percent in the first half of twenty twenty six. So no, this isn't just one group of hardcore collectors juicing the numbers. Something broader is happening, though. And I love comparing this to the ridiculous numbers from when I grew up, because of course I had to go Wikipedia this stuff. In 2000, the year 2000, the U.S. music industry shipped more than 940 million CDs that year. Nine hundred and forty million. And you rem remember in the year two thousand, what was popular in two thousand? What was where was the destination that people were going to for their music? Because you know, piracy was running rampant in two thousand. People were still buying CDs, even if they were using line wire. And Win MX and whatever else was out there. I don't know if Napster had closed down by that point or not, but think about it though. In the year 2000, in the US, we shipped more than 940 million CDs. 940 million. That's an insane number. Now, we're not going back there. And I don't think we need to because in two thousand if you wanted the new album, well, you basically had to buy the C D 'cause well, there wasn't streaming yet. Especially if you wanted to listen to it on the go or in your car. I mean iPods, I guess, but you know. I don't know when that launched. When did iPod launch? Or at least iTunes. It was two thousand and one. So the you know, iPods weren't even out there. The original one didn't launch until two thousand and one. So I mean at that time you needed to grab the CD if you wanted to play it in the car, on the go in your disc man. That's what all of this is what makes twenty twenty six more interesting to me. Because you don't need the CD now. You can have the entire album playing on your phone before you even leave the parking lot if you, you know, still want to pay for that you know that subscription. And people are still going out and buying the CD anyways. I've been myself trying to buy more CDs lately. Especially one of my favorite bands at the moment, The Warning. Three Sisters out of Mexico. I've been buying their recent albums because I like them so much that it's worth fifteen, sixteen, seventeen bucks to buy that album. That's the story here. You can you know, you can walk into a target right now and still find new CDs sitting around fourteen, fifteen, you know, bucks. Couple of the most popular artists out there right now. Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Casey Musgraves. Current albums. Normal retail store, normal CD racks. You can go in there and pick their albums up right now. Hell. Barnes and Noble, to my surprise, still has CDs, and they have records and then and they have cassettes too. A current Phoebe Bridges release for You know, example is around sixteen dollars on CD, eighteen if you want it on cassette, and somewhere in the thirties if you want it on vinyl. I guess depending on the addition. Taylor Swift's own store has CDs for thirteen dollars, a cassette for nineteen, and vinyl for thirty nine. Now, you know, that's not meant to establish some official national average. It's just what this stuff actually costs right now. And that's kind of it's kind of great. For 15 bucks, you can buy an album. Actually, buy it. Put it up on your shelf, play it whenever you want. Nobody's going to charge you again next month. Nobody's coming after you to move you to the next tier the keep access. Nobody tells you. That your grandfathered plan is going away, it's yours. And I think we've spent so long being sold convenience that we forget there was something really nice about that. You know, I bought it. It's mine. End of transaction. We're done. Because almost. Everything else right now seems to want to go the other direction. And you know what I'm talking about. Movies, television, software, games, you know, music in some aspects, cloud storage, features in your car, like heated seats. I mean, come on. Everything wants to be a subscription service. Even things that have No business being a subscription service. Everything wants a monthly payment or another monthly payment. And From what I'm seeing on Reddit and Facebook, X, Threads, wherever you go and look, people are sick and tired of it. People are exhausted of being squeezed for every penny that they have. The 2026 Digital Media Trends Research found that 73% of consumers were frustrated beyond. Frustrated that their entertainment subscriptions kept raising prices. Around forty percent said they recently had to cut back on entertain entertainment subscriptions because of financial concerns. And for example, my family. Since 2008, 2009, we've had Netflix. I mean, Netflix was the staple because back then in 2009 you had Netflix and Hulu. I mean, that was it. All the channels that were on cable TV weren't invested in this streaming game yet. They didn't believe in it. But Netflix, man, those guys have gotten a little greedy. This year, earlier this year, we finally dropped Netflix. It hit damn near 30 bucks a month for one service. And let's be honest, there isn't that much good on there anymore. I mean, again, my personal opinion. We dumped it. We got rid of it. And we even ditched Disney Plus for a while. You know, until something pops up on there that we actually want to watch. We can't keep them all going indefinitely because it's too damn expensive. It's costing more, you know, than it used to cost for regular old cable TV. The average household that subscribes to streaming video was spending over $70 a month on these services. And 61% said another five dollars, another five dollars tacked on. Could make them cancel their favorite streaming service. Seventy three percent. Remember, seventy-three percent of consumers are frustrated that their subscriptions kept raising prices. That's not a couple of, you know, angry people complaining online. People are sick of the bill. And then there's the question of what you're actually getting for that bill. Sony's PlayStation terms puts this in incredibly plain language. When you buy digital PlayStation content, you're buying a license to use it. You don't own the product. Sony's terms go even further and say that using words like buy, purchase, ownership doesn't mean ownership of the content has actually been transferred to you. That's asinine and in in incredible. To me. You're you're purchasing a license. The button, yeah, can basically say buy. You give them money, but the terms underneath the intr in entire transaction say, well, it's not buy buy. It's you get the rights as long as we say you get the rights. Then in July of this year, Sony announced that they're gonna be starting in January of twenty twenty eight that, you know, they're changing it up. New PlayStation games won't be produced on physical disc anymore. New games will be digital only. So Sony being entirely tone deaf and not reading the room. In looking at, you know, consumers are rediscovering physical music and other forms of physical media, one of the biggest companies in the gaming industry decide, yeah, we're gonna go the other direction. Sounds like a completely corporate decision to me. Completely tone deaf. And I think that's exactly why this conversation about ownership is getting a lot more interesting. Now, Sony's not a unique here. It's just a really good example because they've been in the news lately. This is how huge portions of digital entertainment work. We spent you know, we've spent years trading ownership for convenience and easy access. And to be fair, for a while, that trade felt good. It was cheap. You got unlimited access. It was convenient. It was incredible. You didn't need the giant CD rack in your living room. You didn't need shelves of DVDs. You didn't have to carry a binder of 150 burn CDs, you know, in it that somehow weighed probably damn near forty or fifty pounds and had exactly three discs you actually even touched or listened to. Everything was right there. But then the company's seen, ooh, ooh, what if we just increased a little bit and then a little bit more? And then a little bit. And then before you know it, the subscriptions have multiplied. The prices went up. Then things started disappearing from the catalogs because there was licensing disagreements. Then everything needed another account because things got fragmented across multiple services. That hasn't necessarily been the case for music yet, but it's definitely been the case for streaming TV. Then the thing you clicked buy turned out that you were just buying a license. And suddenly that shelf full of CDs or DVDs or Blu-rays doesn't look quite as stupid as everybody said it did 15 years ago. There's another number that I love. Luminate says roughly half of Gen Z and millennial C D buyers don't even own a CD player. Think about that. Roughly half of Gen Z and millennial people that are buying CDs don't actually have a CD player to play the CD in. At first that sounds completely backwards, right? Why the hell are you buying a CD if you can't play the CD? But I think that actually explains the entire comeback. The disc isn't just a storage format anymore. What else did you get with the CD? Think about it. You got a booklet. you know, it's the artwork that's in that. It's the packaging. It's the liner notes. It's something from an artist you care about sitting on your shelf. It's a collection. It's yours. And physical buyers haven't abandoned, you know, streaming completely yet either. Luminate has found that there's actually more than the average music listener to also pay for a music streaming service. They stream music. And they buy the music they really care about. Both. That's what I like about this. Nobody has to choose a side. Spotify doesn't have to die for CDs to be fun again. Streaming doesn't have to disappear for vinyl, you know, to matter. Apple Music doesn't have to shut down before somebody can decide they want a new album sitting on their shelf. The old thing found another reason to exist, which brings me back to radio. It's taken me 20 minutes to get back here, but we're back to radio because I don't Think radio needs to be Spotify either. I don't think that's the assignment. And I definitely don't think radio needs another subscription model. Don't be a serious XM. The entire entertainment business is already standing there with its handout asking for $10 a month, $15 a month, $20 a month, every single month. Radio. Has something increasingly unusual. You turn it on, it works. No usernames, no passwords, no credit cards, no free trials, no deciding which subscription tier you're willing to tolerate. No email telling you that starting next month you're paying $3 more for exactly the same thing. You hit a button, sound comes out of it. Kind of refreshing when you think about it, doesn't it? But just being there and being free isn't enough. A blank CD isn't interesting either. What you put on it matters. Radio needs to give me something worth actually turning it on for. A station that actually knows where it lives. A person who knows the music. Somebody local who can tell me what's happening. A show with an actual point of view. Something weird at eleven o'clock at night. You know, or a song I wasn't expecting, a voice that isn't trying to sound exactly like every other voice in every other market. Something with a unique fingerprint on it. That's what I think physical media is getting right. It has that unique fingerprint. Streaming, don't get me wrong, streaming is incredible. I'm not going cold turkey and giving it up. But there is something satisfying about choosing a record, putting it on in the, you know, deciding that it's, you know, what I'm listening to. There's something satisfying about opening a CD. No matter how aggravating that stupid plastic is on there. And there's apparently even something satisfying about rewinding a cassette tape. Although I think we've all conveniently forgot what a pain in the ass that actually was. But people want these things anyways. Not because they're better at everything. Because they're different. Radio can be different too. Keep the transmitter, build the app, make CarPlay good, make Android Auto good, make the stream sound great, put the station everywhere. But don't sand off the parts that make it radio. Don't turn it into a worse version of Spotify. Maybe radio's comeback looks a lot like what's happening with physical music. Not replacing the new thing, you know, not pretending it's nineteen ninety eight again, not trying to get everybody back, just remembering that. There was something genuinely good about the old thing that we threw away maybe a little too quickly. People are buying music they can hold again. They're building shelves again. They're buying records and CDs and cassette tapes, apparently, when the exact same music is already sitting on that app that's on that phone in their pocket. That's not failure. That's a comeback. And if vinyl, CDs at cassette tapes, can find a a new generation of people who give a shit about it. I have a very hard time believing radio can't do the same thing. That's the show. If you want to keep up with it, subscribe wherever you're listening. And if, you know, if you want to connect. You can grab the socials at Tylerwoodward.me if you want to buy me a cup of coffee. You can also do that at Tylerwoodward.me. I'll catch you guys next time.