[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Both JSON and XML are self-documenting, and most modern databases support directly importing and exporting them. Though the tools to accomplish this could be better, these formats are far better suited as a "medium for data distribution" than CSV files are.

That said, a simple compressed .sql file of INSERT statements can often go a long way.

The only reason CSV is widely used is because normal people think of data as spreadsheets, and asking them to fire up a database and shred JSON data into it is ridiculous when they just want to whip up a line graph or answer a simple question (e.g. "What was value X on a this particular date?").