# The CD passed vinyl in 1987. Vinyl took the lead back in 2020.

> When the CD overtook vinyl in the United States, how long it stayed ahead, the year vinyl took the lead back, and the gap between the two formats in every year since 1980 — in inflation-adjusted dollars, from RIAA figures.

**Canonical URL:** https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/  
**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.

Two formats, one axis, no guesswork about when the lead changed hands. Both crossovers are computed from the series rather than repeated from press coverage, and the table below gives the gap for every year since 1980 so a claim about any particular year can be checked in one line.

## When the lead changed hands

Crossover years are computed by comparing the two inflation-adjusted series year by year.

1. **The CD passed vinyl in U.S. revenue in 1987, 4 years after the format first shows revenue in the series.**
   - Basis: First year CD exceeds LP/EP, inflation-adjusted. CD revenue first appears in 1983.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/#fact-cd-overtook-vinyl
2. **Vinyl took the lead back in 2020 — 33 years later.**
   - Basis: First year after 1987 where LP/EP exceeds CD, inflation-adjusted.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/#fact-vinyl-retook-lead
3. **At its 1999 peak the CD earned $14.14bn in 2025 dollars — about 14 times what vinyl earns today.**
   - Basis: CD 1999 ÷ LP/EP 2025, both inflation-adjusted.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/#fact-cd-peak-vs-vinyl-now
4. **The CD still earned $312m in 2025, against vinyl's $1.04bn — vinyl now takes 3.3× what the CD does.**
   - Basis: LP/EP ÷ CD, nominal, 2025.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/#fact-cd-today
5. **The CD has fallen from its peak for 26 years and is now 2.2% of what it was, in the same dollars.**
   - Basis: CD 2025 ÷ CD 1999, inflation-adjusted.
   - Source: RIAA, U.S. wholesale revenue
   - Anchor: https://vinylai.app/market/data/vinyl-vs-cd/#fact-cd-decline-length

## Year by year, vinyl against CD

| Year | Vinyl | CD | Ahead | Gap |
| :-- | --: | --: | --: | --: |
| 1980 | $5.21bn | — | Vinyl | — |
| 1981 | $5.03bn | — | Vinyl | — |
| 1982 | $3.90bn | — | Vinyl | — |
| 1983 | $3.31bn | $31.7m | Vinyl | 104.3× |
| 1984 | $2.91bn | $183m | Vinyl | 15.9× |
| 1985 | $2.32bn | $665m | Vinyl | 3.5× |
| 1986 | $1.75bn | $1.56bn | Vinyl | 1.1× |
| 1987 | $1.36bn | $2.58bn | CD | 1.9× |
| 1988 | $878m | $3.25bn | CD | 3.7× |
| 1989 | $347m | $3.84bn | CD | 11.1× |
| 1990 | $129m | $4.85bn | CD | 37.6× |
| 1991 | $42.1m | $5.85bn | CD | 138.9× |
| 1992 | $18.8m | $6.98bn | CD | 371.5× |
| 1993 | $14.3m | $8.28bn | CD | 578.3× |
| 1994 | $23.5m | $10.50bn | CD | 447.7× |
| 1995 | $32.2m | $11.31bn | CD | 351.7× |
| 1996 | $45.8m | $11.64bn | CD | 254.2× |
| 1997 | $40.5m | $11.36bn | CD | 280.3× |
| 1998 | $40.7m | $12.88bn | CD | 316.1× |
| 1999 | $37.3m | $14.14bn | CD | 379.5× |
| 2000 | $31.4m | $14.11bn | CD | 449.1× |
| 2001 | $30.2m | $13.40bn | CD | 443.6× |
| 2002 | $22.3m | $12.31bn | CD | 553.1× |
| 2003 | $23.0m | $11.22bn | CD | 487.4× |
| 2004 | $20.0m | $11.14bn | CD | 558.4× |
| 2005 | $14.2m | $9.90bn | CD | 697.5× |
| 2006 | $15.2m | $8.55bn | CD | 562.1× |
| 2007 | $21.6m | $6.61bn | CD | 306.4× |
| 2008 | $51.4m | $4.67bn | CD | 90.9× |
| 2009 | $58.1m | $3.70bn | CD | 63.7× |
| 2010 | $79.6m | $2.86bn | CD | 35.9× |
| 2011 | $104m | $2.53bn | CD | 24.4× |
| 2012 | $137m | $1.99bn | CD | 14.6× |
| 2013 | $178m | $1.73bn | CD | 9.7× |
| 2014 | $209m | $1.39bn | CD | 6.7× |
| 2015 | $285m | $1.15bn | CD | 4.0× |
| 2016 | $302m | $853m | CD | 2.8× |
| 2017 | $323m | $755m | CD | 2.3× |
| 2018 | $344m | $477m | CD | 1.4× |
| 2019 | $405m | $443m | CD | 1.1× |
| 2020 | $531m | $341m | Vinyl | 1.6× |
| 2021 | $807m | $401m | Vinyl | 2.0× |
| 2022 | $880m | $297m | Vinyl | 3.0× |
| 2023 | $957m | $364m | Vinyl | 2.6× |
| 2024 | $980m | $348m | Vinyl | 2.8× |
| 2025 | $1.04bn | $312m | Vinyl | 3.3× |

*Both columns inflation-adjusted to 2025 dollars, which is the only basis on which a 1985 comparison and a 2025 comparison mean the same thing. "Gap" is the ratio between the larger and the smaller.*

## Why the crossover years are often quoted wrongly

Two different events get collapsed into one claim. The CD passed vinyl in *revenue* in 1987, and vinyl passed CD in revenue again in 2020. Unit shipments crossed in different years, because a vinyl LP has always carried a higher price than a CD — so a sentence about "sales" needs to say which measure it means.

The second trap is inflation. On nominal figures the crossovers move, because the same dollar means different things in 1987 and 2025. The table above is inflation-adjusted throughout, and the hub's explorer will switch it to nominal if a comparison needs the dollars of the day.

## 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.
- [23 U.S. music formats since 1973: when each peaked, and what replaced it](https://vinylai.app/market/data/music-format-timeline/) — The lifecycle of every format: debut year, peak year, peak share, current state.
- [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.