How Alliance Entertainment Is Helping Drive the Physical Music Boom
Categoria: Musica
“The CD growth has been insane the last couple years,” says Alliance Entertainment CEO Jeff Walker. “This is not going to stop, it is just ramping up now.”
Por Billboard | 04/09/2026
This week, the RIAA released its annual mid-year report on the state of the U.S. recorded music industry, which showed (among many other data points) that in the first half of 2026, revenue from physical music — largely vinyl and CD sales — was up 25.9% over the first half of 2025. That kind of massive growth — in an era where streaming revenue alone makes up 82% of the business — is staggering, and comes with a 20-year growth pattern for vinyl (up 17.7% year over year) and an eye-popping 58.6% year over year bump for CD sales, largely driven by the K-pop industry and a general trend toward viewing physical media as a merch item. Related RIAA 2026 Mid-Year Report: Streaming Growth Drives Revenue to $6 Billion, CD Sales Increase More Than 50% Tupac Shakur's Family Reacts to Duane 'Keffe D' Davis' Murder Conviction: 'This Is Not the End of the Story' Major Lazer to Headline Melbourne's New Year's at the Bowl And underpinning a significant amount of that growth is Alliance Entertainment, the biggest indie distributor and wholesaler for physical music in the country. Alliance is both a one-stop shop for consumers and independent record stores to purchase vinyl and CDs and a distributor through its AMPED division, which partners with labels across the country to fulfill their vinyl and CD needs for releases by their artists. And the company is thriving in this new environment: according to CEO Jeff Walker , Alliance’s sales are up 46% year over year, as the vinyl boom continues and CD sales balloon. And that helps Walker earn the title of Billboard ’s Executive of the Week. Here, Walker discusses the physical media boom, why CD sales in particular have grown and why, in such a digital world, physical still has its place. “Fans do not have to buy any physical product to listen to music today, with all of the digital options,” Walker says. “Fans are buying physical because they are true fans of the artists and want to own a piece of what they have created. Vinyl and CDs are collectibles just like trading cards and anything else people collect — that is why people say, ‘I have a vinyl collection,’ or a CD collection. It has always been a collectible.” Related IFPI Global Report 2026 Takeaways: Vinyl Growth Outpaces Digital, China Surges & More This week, the RIAA published its 2026 mid-year report, showing that vinyl sales in the U.S. were up another 17.7% year over year, at $544 million, well on its way to its second straight $1 billion year (the first since 1983) and its 20th straight year of growth. As the largest vinyl distributor in the U.S., how has Alliance been able to help fuel this growth? In 2025, we sold 16.8 million units of vinyl and 13.5 million units of CD, and we are on track for 2026 to sell 20 million units of both vinyl and CD. Crazy increases. We do this two ways: as a traditional one-stop, stocking and selling all music titles from the major labels and independent distributors; a