4 min readJust now
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The Great Return: From Digital Abundance to Analog Meaning
In the fall of 2025, I find myself living a paradox that defines my generation. Born at the peak of the digital revolution, I spent the last decade methodically reintroducing analog “friction” into my life. I was collecting vinyl records i can’t play, wandering car-free city streets, and entertaining offline social activities.
Younger people around me are leading an analog resurgence. Far from the stereotype that only older generations buy physical media, Gen Z has emerged as the vanguard of “analog seeking” behavior. According to Luminate’s 2023 entertainment report, Gen Z listeners are 27% more likely to purchase vinyl records than the average music consumer, despite having grown up in the er…
4 min readJust now
–
The Great Return: From Digital Abundance to Analog Meaning
In the fall of 2025, I find myself living a paradox that defines my generation. Born at the peak of the digital revolution, I spent the last decade methodically reintroducing analog “friction” into my life. I was collecting vinyl records i can’t play, wandering car-free city streets, and entertaining offline social activities.
Younger people around me are leading an analog resurgence. Far from the stereotype that only older generations buy physical media, Gen Z has emerged as the vanguard of “analog seeking” behavior. According to Luminate’s 2023 entertainment report, Gen Z listeners are 27% more likely to purchase vinyl records than the average music consumer, despite having grown up in the era of Spotify. In fact, half of U.S. vinyl buyers today don’t even own a record player – they buy records as tangible tokens of fandom and identity
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Feature traces derived from the RIAA operational panel: vinyl dominates physical revenues while physical share of total rebounds post-2020
Gen Z is the most online generation in history, yet they report the highest levels of loneliness and digital fatigue. A Global Web Index study found that 32% of Gen Z have taken “digital detox” breaks from the internet (compared to only 19% of Baby Boomers).
In a world of deepfakes and infinite streams, an experience only feels “real” if it offers tactile resistance. From mechanical keyboards to Polaroid photographs, young adults are gravitating toward the touch and weight of things, subconsciously assuring themselves that what they encounter isn’t just an algorithmic mirage.
I myself periodically disconnect from my devices, experiencing first-hand what Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes as the relief from “timeless time” – the frenetic, unanchored temporality of the digital world.
Gen Z’s odd affinity for the bygone (film cameras, vinyl, vintage clothes) is a reclamation of the sensory and social richness that earlier technological optimism promised to replace but ultimately could not.
Market Data: The Vinyl & Physical Media Revival (2020 – 2024)
If the cultural zeitgeist is tilting analog, the hard numbers tell the same story. Nowhere is this more evident than the music industry, which he calls the “canary in the coal mine” for shifts in media value. After a two-decade decline of physical formats, vinyl records have staged an extraordinary comeback in the 2020s – both in the United States and across Europe.
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The Demographic Inversion: Gen Z displays the highest rates of both “Digital Fatigue” and “Analog Seeking” behavior, defying the expectation that older generations drive physical media markets.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), U.S. vinyl record revenues grew 17% in 2022 to $1.2 billion, marking the 16th consecutive year of growth for the format. For the first time since 1987, vinyl albums outsold CDs in the U.S. in units – 41 million vinyl records vs 33 million CDs were sold in 2022.
Europe mirrors this trajectory. In the UK, vinyl LP purchases increased for the 16th straight year in 2023, surging 11.7% in units from the prior year. Nearly 5.9 million vinyl records were sold in Britain in 2023, the highest number in over three decades. Notably, the UK still sold about 11 million CDs in 2023 (about twice the units of vinyl), but CD sales are now approaching a plateau after years of decline. Germany, historically a stronghold of CD consumption, is seeing vinyl carve out a growing niche as well; industry data show German vinyl sales climbing by mid-single digits and vinyl now making up roughly 6% of total recorded music revenue in that market. And in a global context, the trend is undeniable: the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reported global physical music sales grew 13.4% in 2023, a dramatic acceleration from just 3.8% growth the year prior.
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This figure illustrates this divergence. In the period 2018 – 2024, U.S. streaming music revenue roughly doubled, while vinyl revenue nearly tripled, albeit from a smaller base
Streaming (digital) remains dominant in absolute dollars, but its meteoric rise has leveled to single-digit annual growth in the saturated U.S. market. Vinyl, on the other hand, has grown from a novelty revival to a billion-dollar industry on its own. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of vinyl revenue from 2018 – 2022 was in the high teens, vastly outpacing the overall music market.
When music became an all-you-can-eat digital utility, its “Streaming Devaluation” set in – the marginal value of another song or stream approached zero. In response, value migrated to the scarce complementary good: physical presence and ownership. This is why concert ticket prices and vinyl album sales have surged even as per-stream payouts plummet.
the more the digital domain saturates us with instant, on-demand content, the more we prize the unique, unrepeatable or tangible experience.
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