Book sales are up, and Barnes & Noble is expanding again, with nearly 70 new stores opened in 2025 and roughly 60 more planned for 2026. At the same time, independent bookstores are multiplying, vinyl remains the dominant physical music format in the U.S., and even CDs and DVDs are reappearing as collectible staples for younger buyers.
Consumers aren’t giving up their favorite streaming services or e-books. But buying habits increasingly point toward ownership, browsing, and collecting—small pleasures that feel newly valuable in a culture that has spent the last decade renting everything. The shift has accelerated over the past two years, as post-pandemic buying habits, rising subscription costs, and retail reinvestment have converged at the same time.
Barnes & Noble Is Expanding Again—and That’s the Big Signal
It wasn’t long ago that many buyers saw Barnes & Noble as an Amazon-era casualty of online selling. It seemed too big, too cookie-cutter, and too late to adapt. But now, Barnes & Noble appears to be a true comeback story, opening new stores at a scale that’s hard to dismiss.
Business Insider reports that Barnes & Noble opened nearly 70 locations in 2025 and plans to open roughly 60 more in 2026. The company’s strategy has leaned into smaller footprints and greater local control, giving store managers greater say in what gets stocked and displayed. The shift toward giving local managers greater control over their stores has created a sense that each store has a unique character, and, in practice, that means more regional flavor, more discovery, and more reasons for buyers to linger.
Independent Bookstores Are Opening Fast, Too
Barnes & Noble isn’t expanding into a vacuum.
The American Booksellers Association reported 323 new brick-and-mortar, pop-up, and mobile indie stores opened in 2024. And the pace hasn’t slowed, with additional reporting suggesting it has continued into 2025.
What’s driving it isn’t just “shop local” sentiment, though that’s undoubtedly part of the mix; independent stores have increasingly positioned themselves as community spaces. They also offer a kind of human curation that many readers say they’re craving after years of algorithmic recommendation loops.
The result is a rare retail moment in which the chain and the indie aren’t purely cannibalizing each other, but rather drawing on the same renewed appetite for in-store browsing and the idea that cultural shopping can be a shared experience.
Photo Credit: Chart source: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Vinyl Dominates Physical Music Sales in the U.S.
The physical-media rebound doesn’t stop at paper.
RIAA data shows vinyl accounted for nearly three-quarters of U.S. physical music revenue in 2024, reaching about $1.4 billion. For the third straight year, vinyl albums also outsold CDs in units (44 million vinyl records shipped versus 33 million CDs).
The growth appears to go beyond novelty, as vinyl is now an established business lane, supported by new releases, reissues, special editions, and a collector economy that rewards scarcity and packaging. Retailers have responded the obvious way: more shelf space, more endcaps, more “limited pressing” signage.
And the reasons feel familiar to anyone watching bookstores rebound. Vinyl offers more than utility. It’s sound, sure, but it’s also ritual, display, and identity.
Gen Z Is Making DVDs and CDs Cool Again
If you want a sign that this isn’t driven only by older collectors, look at who’s buying discs.
The Washington Post has reported that Gen Z is helping make DVDs and CDs “cool” again, not as a substitute for streaming but as a counterweight to it. Part of the appeal is that, as streaming service prices continue to rise, physical media is a cheaper alternative, and the second-hand supply is enormous.
Streaming libraries are fluid: titles rotate in and out, versions change, and licensing disputes quietly reshape what’s available. Owning a CD, DVD, or record is a way of opting out of that churn. Physical media is permanent in a way that subscriptions aren’t.
Not to mention, licensing disputes quietly reshape what’s available or continuously shuffle where you can find a piece of media.
There’s also a social element to collecting physical media, as collecting is legible and a shelf says something about you in a way a playlist thumbnail doesn’t.
What’s Driving the Physical Media Rebound?
- Ownership: no licensing removal
- Collectibility: packaging, variants, scarcity
- Discovery: browsing beats algorithms
- Gifting: physical objects travel well
- Offline reliability: no bandwidth required (great lead-in to your service-member section)
Target’s Tiny Vinyl Shows How Retailers Are Selling “Collectible Media”
Big-box retailers don’t chase vibes unless the money follows. And lately, they’ve been doubling down on physical media.
In 2025, Target introduced “Tiny Vinyl,” a deliberately miniature, highly collectible format pitched as “fully functional” and “crazy cute,” curated toward superfans. It’s not competing on convenience; instead, it provides something streamers can’t offer: an object with charm and giftability.
That’s the through-line across the broader comeback. Physical media works best now when framed as an experience.
Why Physical Media Still Matters for Service Members
For service members, the appeal of physical media has never entirely disappeared as streaming assumes reliable bandwidth and consistent access. But military life rarely guarantees any of those. With deployments, field exercises, shipboard duty, rural postings, and temporary housing, the fragility of subscription-based entertainment becomes wildly apparent.
The reliability of physical media has practical and emotional value. Books and records offer a sense of continuity in a profession defined by transition. Bookstores, in particular, serve as low-pressure third places near many bases and duty stations, providing quiet, accessible spaces. For military families, they also serve as shared spaces where children, spouses, and service members can all engage at their own pace.
A Comeback, Not a Rewind
None of this means streaming is fading. It’s still the default, and for most people, it will remain the primary way entertainment shows up in daily life.
But the last couple of years have made it clear that the digital future hasn’t erased the desire to collect or the experience of discovering something with a friend or a stranger, which a streaming service can’t compete with.
Media consumers aren’t abandoning convenience entirely, but they’re supplementing it with objects that feel stable in an unstable media environment.
The bookstore boom, paired with vinyl’s continued dominance inside physical music, doesn’t look like a rewind but instead a recalibration by consumers looking to make a connection and have a physical place to do it.
Story Continues
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