I’m old enough to remember when music was available mainly on CDs, and then to watch as those CDs gave way to streaming. I remember sitting in my fourth-grade classroom listening to music on SoundCloud and Spotify and being amazed by the selection.
Lately, the trend towards physical media has been a little surprising to me. I, like many people, assumed that the trend of vinyl records and collecting would be just that: a trend, but it doesn’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon. Similarly, I also seem to be meeting more and more people who own (and actively use) physical cameras.
So, is this a result of the growing 2000s nostalgia, or the result of wider cultural change, and will it be going anywhere anytime soon?
The Numbers
Well, for one, the analog trend isn’t something you’ve imagined. Forbes reports that not only has the sale of vinyl records hit 47.9 million units (marking 19 straight years of growth as of 2025), but CD sales are rising in certain markets, and cassette tapes managed to sell in numbers that haven’t been seen in 20 years.
Rolling Stone notes that “television film collector culture is having a resurgence.” Rolling Stone’s CT Jones attributes this to the drawbacks of streaming; when a show is taken off a streaming service, it’s often completely unavailable until another streaming service decides to pick it up, an issue that physical media like DVDs and box sets don’t have.
The Imperfections of Streaming Sites
It seems that the surge in the younger generation’s desires for physical media stems from the growing awareness of streaming culture realities. People are growing to realize that although streaming gives access to a wide range of shows, movies, and music, it also means that we really don’t own anything.
In The Beacon’s “The Comeback of Physical Media Consumption”, media collector Noah Jennings mentions the original cut of Star Wars: A New Hope, a movie which has now been lost to the public and is only available on illegal pirating sites.
Other examples include Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, an original Netflix series that was recently removed from the platform, making it unavailable for streaming, and putting it at risk of becoming lost media.
Pushing forces
It could also be possible that shows like Stranger Things have drawn more attention to physical media in younger generations. The show’s immense popularity and intense retro ’80s aesthetic could be drawing younger generations into the world of analog rather than digital.
Perhaps the one cultural force pushing the analog trend the most is artificial intelligence (AI). Forbes’ Elizabeth Grace Coyne says that the push towards “the year of analog living” has stemmed from consumer pushback against the increasingly dominant AI technologies in the social media, marketing, and art worlds.
Coyne also believes that, between the rising cost of living, the pressure coming from a society that emphasizes “the hustle,” and the growing presence of AI, younger generations (particularly Gen Z) have begun to celebrate small milestones and value experiences rather than physical items.
Is This All Just a Trend?
So, all of this begs the question, is analog here to stay, or is it simply another trend?
While I’m certainly no scientific analyst, I’d bet that the analog trend is much more than a simple trend. We’ve seen vinyl sales skyrocket in recent years, with Luminate statistics showing vinyl record sales surpassing CDs as the most popular physical format in 2022 and comprising 72% of all non-digital music sales in 2023.
This, along with the rise of physical cameras like Polaroids and Kodaks, trends like “Grandma Hobbies,” and an increasing consumer exhaustion of AI technologies, seems to signify that physical and analog forms of media won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
For everyone who’s been readily embracing the so-called “Analog 2026,” feel free to continue without fear. Vinyl collecting, Kodaks, and “Grandma Hobbies” like knitting, reading, painting, cooking, and gardening are here to stay.
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