A new survey from Napster estimates that some two billion CDs have gone missing from the record collections of UK music fans (it's quite a bold statistic given the size of the sample group, but I can well believe its true). The survey aimed to discover what formats consumers preferred for storing their music collection. 25% of the 1000 people interviewed said they preferred to listen to music via their PC or MP3 player, while 35% said they now stored their entire music collection in MP3 format.
But perhaps the most interesting discovery was how many of those surveyed reckoned they had lost a number of CDs over the years. Those surveyed owned an average of 126 albums, but reckoned they had lost an average of 37 CDs each. CDs were frequently lost after being taken to parties or leant to friends, or at the end of relationships when an ex-partner claimed custody. Personally I lose CDs on my desk. What happens to them I'm not sure, but once a CD is carelessly allowed to slip into the big tray of unboxed CDs next to my PC it can be months before anyone sees it again. We once lost our only copy of Ben Folds Five's 'The Unauthorised Biography Of Reinhold Messner' in there for three agonizing months. And I still haven't found the CD I know is there somewhere which has this really funky version of the Futurama theme tune on it.
Anyway, Napster reckon all these lost CDs is good news, for them at least, because it encourages people to download music - firstly so they have a back up on their PC, and secondly to replace the lost albums. Perhaps more importantly for Napster, the research also seems to suggest a slow drift from physical to digital music collections. Past research has been inconclusive on the long term future of the CD, but Napster UK General Manager Leanne Sharman reckons their research shows physical music formats may disappear quicker than many people currently assume. Sharman: "This latest ICM research underlines the tremendous shift towards digital music that we've witnessed all year. This is further borne out by these findings which show how quickly traditional record formats are becoming obsolete."