Phones have overloaded us with so much different kinds of media where it becomes unhealthy, especially in the music aspect of things. Many younger people have started realizing this and have decided to turn to physical media like vinyls and DVDs for entertainment.
That isn’t really the only reason though, while it is a big one. Physical media has just become very retro and something that people find really cool to collect. There is also the aspect of owning it, owning some of your favorite songs that you can hold in your hand, or seeing albums that mean something to you on your shelf.
This has brought back the true value of music to some people instead of being overwhelmed by the amount of choices on places like Spotify. I’m not saying for you to just ignore what’s on your phone. It’s very convenient and can be a good thing when used right, like for discovery of things that you enjoy and the use for on the go.
Each side has their ups and downs and using both can mitigate just about all of the critiques that people would have. Some of the stuff is too many things from the phone which just overloads us and vinyls are pretty limited because of pricing of everything.
The percentage of people using these forms of physical media has increased a good amount within the past year or two after many years of the decline of physical media. In 2023 there was a 23% dropped in sales of physical media and then slowed down a lot in 2025 by sales lowering by 9%.
While sales are still decreasing, it has changed drastically where in the next year or two sales could start increasing. Now the question is, what’s next for physical media?
