Just wondering. There have been numerous reports recently that CDs only have a 15-20 year shelf life. If my whole collection is trash by the time I turn 35, that's a lot of money down the drain. It almost makes me want to start buying vinyl, but it's obviously not as convenient.

i got my first CD in 1987, still plays perfect.
but i do fear this.

Nope, not worried at all. For one, it seems very unlikely that you'll still be listening to all of those CDs in 15-20 years. Second, even if you were, you'd probably have upgraded to some other format. Third, there have been "scary rumors" of this sort going around for as long as I can remember in relation to CDs. I have yet to find a CD that has failed me for reasons other than scratches, and I've been buying them since 1987 or so (first CD: Pink Floyd - Momentary Lapse of Reason. I listened to it until I got the remaster a couple years ago and it never showed any damage beyond scratches.) Treat your music well, it will treat you well in return.

Me too, Hot Rocks was the one, I believe.

I think my first cd was 1987 as well. That tiffany album with "I think i'm alone now" track on it. Yeah i would be gutted if i was unable to play that anymore.

I am terrible at looking after cd's, so many are scratched badly. Majority of my collection is vinyl and i seem to take a lot better care of them.

wehn im sober i always take perfect care of cds. But when im not


im legitmately afraid of the shelflife. Some of my BURNT scds that ive kept in perfect condition are now fucked ( after a year of PERFECT storage in cases). But ive kept them perfectyl, and theyre still fucked.

still, vinyl is a whole lot more dlicate.

I'm much more concerned with crotch rot.

CD Rot?

File that next to Millenium Bug in the 'Yeah, sure' folder.

youll be sorry when your plane falls out of the sky and your bak account loses all its moneyz

did the study say anything about mp3 rot?

burned CD's do have a very short lifespan.

my first cd was Beatles "Help!" thanks to my brother for buying such a classy first CD for me.

You are an ideal consumer, perfectly happy to accept everything as inevitably disposable.

The shelf-life of a CD is expected to be 20 - 50 years, still plenty of time for the doomsayers to be proven right or wrong. But if they're right I am gonna be extremely pissed off. I buy my music with the intent of being able to listen to it for the rest of my life.

And I also don't see the changing of formats to be something that needs to be applauded - eventually I guess music will be like computers, in constant need of a system upgrade every couple years. You'll have to re-buy (or, more likely, re-rent) your "collection" on a regular basis. Oh well, at least it'll be cheap.

Its going to annoy me if I have to replace all my cds because my players go out and whatever new technology is out there doesn't support them.

That said, if my cds themselves last 20-50 years, I'm going to be pretty cool with that. I don't know anything else that retails for $10-15 that I really expect to last that long. And I haven't had rot on any of my oldest cds either which I've owned for 20+ years. And realistically I'm not going to be listening to the same stuff in my 60's that I listened to as a teen. A lot of the stuff could rot and I'd probably never even know that it did.

No, I am not. What I am is a realist. You may not upgrade, I may not upgrade, but 99% of people will. No one is concerned about the 1% that don't. We do not count.


And in relation to my comment about not even listening to these CDs in 20 years, isn't Verbal Intercourse like 19 or something? Chances are he will abandon much of what he listens to now in that time and will have moved on to the latest format that music is available in.

CD rot is a joke. No one ever bitched about worn out vinyl and tapes like they do about the mere possibility that CDs might rot - an example of which I still have yet to see in real life.

It depends on who you are, I guess. I got my first CD player in 1985, and my first CDs then too. I still have them and listen to them. Some of them from this era definitely have CD rot (if I hold it up to a light, there are pinpoint sized rays of light shining through the CD), but I haven't found one yet that won't play, but the time is coming. CDs, especially the original ones from the early to mid-80s definitely have some problems. The technology has improved so the CDs now should last longer. I just hope the ones that become unplayable are reasonably replaceable.

I'm tougher on my cds than rot ever will be. Isn't that right, third copy of Pleased to Meet Me?

What, exactly, is "crotch rot"?

Is it a scientific medical condition, or just a 2nd-grade comeback for "buttface"?

Disc rot is a drastic color change - from the normal silver to a bronze color. What you describe are simply scratches, which is what most of the problems people have with CDs are centered around. If you even lightly scrape the label-side of a CD, it can permanently damage it. Just setting something with something gritty on its bottom on top of a disc can scratch through that extremely thin coating on the top side of a CD. Why they made CDs with this vulnerable surface, we'll never know - they got it right with DVDs, which have a nice thick plastic surface on top of the reflective layer (obviously to facilitate double-sided discs rather than scratch protection.)

what the hell is wrong with you people?

in this day and age, how are you not ripping and backing everything up as MP3's? sure i ahev cd's from the 80's that still play fine, but i'm not taking any chances.

Because I've lost all the data on my computer many more times than I've misplaced or damaged a cd.

And I've only got 400 cd's to my name. I can't imagine how much time that would entail for the people on here with collections in the thousands.

you have bad luck.

I have one CD (The Roches' Speak) that has legitimately slowly gotten worse with age--bought new in 1989, played fine for years on multiple CD players, but in the past 5 years or so, it's developed more and more dropouts, freezing and skipping toward the end of the album. The disc is not scratched or physically damaged at all.

Nevertheless, I'm putting CD rot into the "not worth worrying about" bin next to bird flu, monkey pox and snakes on planes.

(I suspect that rumors of the possibly-non-existent CD rot came from the very real "laser rot" problem of about 15 years ago. The old laser video discs of the '80s and early '90s [for you youngsters, picture a giant 12" DVD that nobody bought] had a period where a lot of discs started to slowly go south. Like CDs and DVDs, the discs had a metal layer covered in clear plastic, but these were manufactured as two halves which were glued together. Word had it that one of the manufacturers changed their glue at some point; the glue slowly broke down, letting air in, and the metal layer started to oxidize. You could often see the actual damage as whitish spots on the mirrored surface.)


I've got all my MP3's on 5 1/4" floppies. Set for life.

I've never had any cases of CD rot, but have had one of DVD rot. It was the early release of Vertigo--bought sometime in late '98. Just stopped working one day on all dvd players.