The total revenue of CDs sold in 1999 (Peak CD) was $938 million.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/186772/album-shipments-i...

The best estimate for the number of adults that same year I could find was 191 million. Let’s say 200 million to include some teams.

That’s nowhere close to 10 to 20 CDs.

I can’t find a citation. But I’ve seen other places that people were spending $65 a year on music before streaming and iTunes

I believe those are US units not revenues. So depending on how you count relevant consumers that’s actually close to 10 CDs per year per person.

Which puts music purchases in the rough ballpark of streaming which is probably not coincidental.

That’s about 5 CDs per adult then.

Yes. But most music purchases were probably people from about their late teens through about their 30s. So the relevant adult population is probably quite a bit smaller.

Point is you’re looking at on the order of $100 per year plus or minus.

I’m willing to bet that the average poor college student I knew in school was buying at least one album a month—albeit sometimes secondhand and I probably bought a lot more than that after graduation.

No one makes money when I play the Funkadelic album I've owned for the past 20 years, but my SO can't make it two or three songs without an ad on Spotify.

Distribution costs are lower without, so any reduction in CD sales seem easily offset by digital sales, ads, etc.

Yeah I mean, I wish people would illustrate their anecdotes with statistics, right? Oh wait, I did. I even alluded to the fact that I was an outlier in not buying CDs in the late nineties. But then the rest of the world got the message. And now we're spending as much on renting music as we did buying it in the eighties.