The average number of CD’s owned in the UK is 126. The average number of those CD’s which have had to be replaced due to theft, loss or accidental melting because they fell down the back of the radiator is 36.
What a wasteful society we live in, this report suggests. It also puts much credence to the idea that you should never lend CD’s to anyone, and that these things probably never happened with vinyl (this conclusion is wholly my own).
I assume the actual conclusion, since the research was commissioned by Napster, is that mp3’s rule because people can’t steal them, or drop them down the back of the radiator. However an interesting comparison might be how many tracks have you lost due to file corruption, a computer dying or dropping your i-Pod?