If you, like us, came of age during the CD era and consequently have a huge CD collection, there's bad news: the format may not be as indestructable as you once thought.
A new Vice article suggests that a phenomenon known as 'disc rot' could potentially destroy your CDs, DVDs and games over time.
The first signs of the decaying process are small discolourations or dots on the discs, which affect the way they play and can get so bad that the disc becomes entirely unplayable - even, as the article suggests, in shrink-wrapped products.
That said, it's not a new phenomenon by any means; it was first noticed in the 1980s when laser discs were more prominent, and it's believed that it's caused by either gradual chemical erosion, or manufacturers who didn't take the longevity of the format into account.
In any case, it seems like your dream of passing on that rare Smiths CD or pristine copy of a certain film or game to your great-great-great grandchild might be fading into the distance. And forget about saving them to flog when they inevitably come back into fashion in 50 years.
Suddenly, the odd scratch on a vinyl doesn't seem so bad, eh?
