Everyone Switched to CDs in the 1990s. The Old Format Just Passed $1 Billion

In the 1990s, the music industry declared the record dead. The compact disc was smaller, cleaner, and skip-free, and within a few years the presses that once stamped millions of records went quiet. Labels dumped their vinyl. Stores cleared the shelves. Whole collections ended up in garage sales and dumpsters for pocket change. Everyone agreed the format was finished. But it never actually disappeared. It held on with the people nobody was listening to, the DJs, the collectors, the ones who swore the sound was better. And in 2025 vinyl passed one billion dollars in US sales, its nineteenth straight year of growth, outselling CDs for the first time since 1983. This is the full story of the vinyl record, from the format the industry buried to the comeback nobody in 1995 would have believed.