While Everyone Chases AI, a New Industry Is Quietly Brewing

A movement that is reshaping how people find meaning, connection, and value.

Build to Thrive delivers strategies, playbooks, trends and tools that help you build smarter, scale your business and stay ahead of the game.

Remember when your Saturday morning started with a burnt CD, a Blockbuster run, and a landline argument about who hung up on who?
Now your phone listens to you, your playlists update themselves, and your shows never stop streaming. Life is faster, smarter, frictionless.

But something curious is happening. While the world sprints toward automation and AI, another movement is quietly gaining momentum — one built not on speed, but on presence.

It’s called The Analog Economy, and it’s growing faster than most people realize.

The Ironic Rebellion

You’d expect Baby Boomers and Gen Xers to crave the past. They lived it. The hiss of a cassette, the creak of a record player, the patience of dial-up — those are familiar comforts.

But what’s surprising, even poetic, is who’s driving the comeback.
It’s not the people who lived through it. It’s the ones who never did.

The fastest-growing demand for analog experiences is coming from Gen Z and younger Millennials — the most digital generations in history. They’ve turned nostalgia into rebellion and friction into luxury.

They’re buying vinyl records they could stream for free.
They’re dropping off film rolls their parents threw away twenty years ago.
They’re buying “dumbphones” just to escape the dopamine trap of notifications.

And I know it’s real — my own son is in college, and he and his friends are obsessed with vinyl. They argue about pressings, hunt for hidden tracks, and handle records like sacred artifacts. I smile every time I see it. We used to buy them because we had no choice. They buy them because it feels real.

This isn’t regression. It’s course correction.

The Numbers Behind the Noise

The data backs it up.

• The U.S. recorded music industry hit a record $17 billion in 2024, mostly from streaming. But tucked inside that number is a small revolution: vinyl sales jumped 10% year over year, reaching $1.4 billion, outselling CDs for the second year in a row.

• Independent bookstores — long written off — are thriving. The American Booksellers Association now lists more than 2,400 stores, the most in over a decade.

• Kodak has reopened production lines to keep up with demand for film. Camera stores in Tokyo, London, and New York report months-long backorders for 35mm rolls.

• Even “boring phones” are back. HMD, which makes Nokia phones, reports double-digit growth for two straight years, powered by young users who want “a break from the scroll.”

Analysts estimate that when you add physical media, handcrafted products, in-person experiences, and tactile commerce, the broader Analog Economy could surpass $3 trillion globally by 2032.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s rebalancing.

Why the Analog Economy Exists

You can’t understand this trend by looking at technology. You have to look at people.

The Analog Economy isn’t anti-tech. It’s pro-human. It’s the natural counterweight to a world that optimized for convenience but lost touch with meaning.

Three shifts are driving it:

1. Scarcity has become luxury.
   When everything is infinite, people crave what’s limited. A record pressing, a local café, or a handwritten note all feel rare — and therefore valuable.

2. Friction creates attachment.
   The effort of doing something by hand — cooking, journaling, or developing film — builds memory and meaning. Convenience kills involvement.

3. Presence is the new premium.
   With screens eating seven hours of the average person’s day, presence has become a commodity. People pay to disconnect, slow down, or simply feel again.

In short, AI is optimizing for output.
Humans are optimizing for experience.

The Business Opportunity

For founders, operators, and investors, this shift isn’t sentimental. It’s strategic.

Every major wave of innovation creates its own countertrend.
When automation rises, craftsmanship gains value.
When algorithms dominate attention, human connection becomes scarce.

We’re entering a decade where meaning will outperform mechanics — where experience, intention, and community become real economic differentiators.

The Bigger Picture

The Analog Economy isn’t about going backward. It’s about balancing forward.
It’s a cultural and economic correction — a reminder that progress isn’t just measured in lines of code, but in how we connect, create, and feel along the way.

Technology will keep accelerating. But the businesses that endure will be the ones that remember what makes people human — and design around it.

Because thriving isn’t about keeping up.
It’s about staying in rhythm.

And if you’re trying to find that rhythm again in your business, your team, or your next chapter that’s what I help people do every day.

I use this space to share ideas and voices that help founders and creators think more clearly, act more intentionally, and build systems that last.

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Sources

RIAA (2024); PwC (2025); McKinsey Consumer Trends Report (2024); HMD Global Press (2025); American Booksellers Association (2025); Kodak Investor Report (2024); Pew Research Center (2024).