# 23 U.S. music formats since 1973: when each peaked, and what replaced it > All 23 recorded-music formats the RIAA has tracked since 1973 — 8-track, cassette, vinyl, CD, downloads, streaming — with the year each appeared, the year it peaked, its peak share of the market, and where it stands today. **Canonical URL:** https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/ **Publishers:** RIAA (United States), RIAJ (Japan), BPI (United Kingdom), BVMI (Germany), SNEP (France), IFPI (global) **Measure:** wholesale revenue unless a row says otherwise **Coverage:** 1973–2025, 23 formats **Updated:** 2026-09-13 **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — credit the trade body that produced the figures. Formats do not simply rise and fall — they overlap for decades. This is every format the RIAA has tracked, with the year it first shows revenue, the year it peaked, what share of the American market it held at that peak, and what it earns now. Vinyl is the only one in the table that peaked, effectively died, and came back. ## What the full format history shows Computed across all 23 format series, inflation-adjusted. 1. **The U.S. recorded music industry peaked in 1999 at $16.01bn in 2025 dollars; 2025 is 72% of that.** - Basis: Sum of all 23 formats, inflation-adjusted. - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/#fact-industry-peak 2. **CD held the largest share of U.S. music revenue for 25 straight years, from 1990 to 2014 — the longest run of any format in the series.** - Basis: Highest-earning format each year, inflation-adjusted, consecutive years. - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/#fact-longest-reign 3. **RIAA has tracked 23 distinct formats since 1973; 7 of them still take at least 1% of revenue.** - Basis: Formats whose share of the 2025 total is 1% or more. - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/#fact-formats-counted 4. **The 1990s were the industry's richest decade at $134.33bn in 2025 dollars.** - Basis: Sum of all formats by decade, inflation-adjusted. - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/#fact-peak-decade ## Every format, ranked by its peak | Format | Type | First revenue | Peak year | Peak value | Peak share | 2025 | Status | | :-- | --: | --: | --: | --: | --: | --: | --: | | CD | Physical | 1983 | 1999 | $14.14bn | 88.3% | $312m | Active | | LP/EP | Physical | 1973 | 1978 | $7.41bn | 62.4% | $1.04bn | Active | | Paid Subscriptions (Premium) | Streaming | 2005 | 2025 | $5.88bn | 51% | $5.88bn | Active | | Cassette | Physical | 1973 | 1988 | $5.04bn | 52.9% | — | Gone | | 8 - Track | Physical | 1973 | 1978 | $2.56bn | 21.6% | — | Gone | | Free Streaming | Streaming | 2011 | 2021 | $2.06bn | 17.6% | $1.79bn | Active | | Download Single | Digital Downloads | 2004 | 2012 | $1.69bn | 25.3% | $111m | Residual | | Other Streaming | Streaming | 2004 | 2018 | $1.49bn | 17.7% | $1.31bn | Active | | Download Album | Digital Downloads | 2004 | 2013 | $1.21bn | 18% | $111m | Residual | | Vinyl Single | Physical | 1973 | 1979 | $831m | 8.8% | $15.2m | Residual | | Ringtones & Ringbacks | Digital Downloads | 2005 | 2007 | $829m | 8.6% | $4.2m | Residual | | Paid Subscriptions (Non-Premium) | Streaming | 2016 | 2022 | $628m | 5.5% | $495m | Active | | Music Video (Physical) | Physical | 1989 | 2004 | $610m | 5% | — | Gone | | Synchronization | Synchronization | 2009 | 2023 | $425m | 3.7% | $407m | Active | | Cassette Single | Physical | 1987 | 1992 | $375m | 3.2% | — | Gone | | CD Single | Physical | 1988 | 1997 | $255m | 1.8% | — | Gone | | Other Tapes | Physical | 1973 | 1973 | $61.9m | 0.7% | — | Gone | | Other Digital | Digital Downloads | 2016 | 2025 | $45.4m | 0.4% | $45.4m | Residual | | Download Music Video | Digital Downloads | 2005 | 2008 | $45.4m | 0.6% | — | Gone | | SACD | Physical | 2003 | 2003 | $25.7m | 0.2% | — | Gone | | Other Physical | Physical | 2023 | 2024 | $15.1m | 0.1% | $10.6m | Residual | | DVD Audio | Physical | 2001 | 2005 | $10.1m | 0.1% | — | Gone | | Kiosk | Digital Downloads | 2005 | 2009 | $6.0m | 0.1% | $1.3m | Residual | *Peaks in 2025 dollars. "Active" means the format still took at least 1% of U.S. revenue in 2025; "residual" means it still earns something below that; "gone" means nothing at all.* ## The pattern underneath the table Each dominant format has held the market for less time than the one before it: LP/EP 1973–1983, Cassette 1984–1989, CD 1990–2014, Download Single 2015–2015, Paid Subscriptions (Premium) 2016–2025. Physical formats ran for decades; the download era lasted a handful of years before subscription streaming took over. Vinyl is the exception to the pattern. It lost the market in the 1980s, fell to 0.19% of its peak by 2005, and is the only format in this table to have recovered afterwards rather than disappearing. ## Data files - [U.S. by format · CSV](https://vinylai.app/market/data/us-recorded-music-by-format.csv) - [U.S. by format · JSON](https://vinylai.app/market/data/us-recorded-music-by-format.json) - [Japan production · CSV](https://vinylai.app/market/data/japan-vinyl-production.csv) - [All facts · JSON](https://vinylai.app/market/data/facts.json) ## Sources 1. **Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)** — U.S. Sales Database / U.S. Recorded Music Analysis - 1973–2025, 23 formats, wholesale revenue, nominal and inflation-adjusted - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - Figures were read from the published data extract behind RIAA’s own dashboard, last updated 2 August 2026 — not re-typed from a news report. - https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ 2. **Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ)** — RIAJ Yearbook 2025 — Statistics for Physical Products - 1994–2024, vinyl production in units and yen - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - Parsed from the Yearbook’s own production tables. Every parsed row was checked against the table’s printed Total; all 31 rows reconcile. - https://www.riaj.or.jp/f/en/data/ 3. **British Phonographic Industry (BPI)** — UK recorded music market 2025 - 2025 vinyl revenue, growth and physical share - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - https://www.bpi.co.uk/news/13097053 4. **Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI)** — Musikindustrie in Deutschland 2025 - 2025 German market, physical segment, vinyl share and growth - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - Read in the German original. BVMI’s English edition renders the 44.2% share ambiguously; the German text attributes it to vinyl (die Schallplatte) unambiguously. - https://www.musikindustrie.de/presse/presseinformationen/musikindustrie-in-deutschland-2025 5. **SNEP** — Bilan 2025 du marché de la musique enregistrée - 2025 French market and vinyl revenue - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - https://snepmusique.com/communiques-dossiers-de-presse/bilan-2025-snep/ 6. **IFPI** — Global Music Report 2026 - 2025 global revenue, vinyl and physical growth - Retrieved 2026-09-13 - https://www.ifpi.org/global-music-report-2026-global-recorded-music-revenues-grow-6-4-as-record-companies-drive-innovation/ ## Related pages in this dataset - [53 years of U.S. music sales, 23 formats, one dataset](https://vinylai.app/market/data/) — The hub: the whole dataset, an explorer, and links to each analysis. - [Every year of U.S. vinyl revenue: 1978 peak, 2005 floor, 2025 recovery](https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-sales-by-year/) — The complete year-by-year vinyl series, with every figure in the table. - [The CD passed vinyl in 1987. Vinyl took the lead back in 2020.](https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/) — The two-format comparison, with both crossover years and the yearly gap. - [Japan pressed 3.15m vinyl records in 2024](https://vinylai.app/market/data/japan-vinyl-production/) — The full Japanese production series in units and yen, and what it does not measure. --- Compiled by VinylAI (https://vinylai.app). Figures belong to the trade bodies named above; this page is a presentation of them, published under CC BY 4.0 so they can be quoted and checked. Every statement carries the arithmetic that produced it.