Back-Up Needed – A Third of Leading UK Home Insurers Don’t Cover Digital Music Loss
Updated. Consumer protection advocate Which? warned UK music fans this weekend that a third of leading home insurers' standard policies don't cover the loss of digital information (e.g. music) on mobile phones, MP3 players, and other digital devices. In other words, if something happens to their digital music collection – stolen, damaged, lost, or otherwise – they're out of luck. It's just gone.
More than 100 million tracks are downloaded in the UK each year and many fans will find their collections wiped out if something happens to the device storing it.
Many leading insurers don't offer coverage of this sort and those that do will cost a little extra. That's why, before switching plans, it's important to compare costs, as it may be a cheaper route is to purchase an external hard drive or pay to a monthly fee to services like Carbonite, which back up files in the cloud.
Peter Vicary Smith, a Which? chief executive, said: "It's surprising that, at a time when the popularity of digital downloads is soaring, insurers aren't offering music lovers the protection they need. People who buy a lot of digital music should double-check their home insurance policy to make sure downloads are covered."
If not, they recommend switching insurance providers.
Additionally, Which? found that only four out of eight digital music download providers – HMV Digital, Play.com, 7digital and Tesco Entertainment – "allow customers to re-download lost tracks, meaning these customers won't have to rely on their insurance." Most notably, the consumer group reported, iTunes only allows products to be downloaded once and will not replace them for any reason.
These are odd times. Fan don't technically own their digital music collections nor do they have any right to resell them. Therefore, not only are libraries worth nothing in the market and cannot be resold on eBay, but with many insurance providers in the UK, they aren't covered on plans either. For all of its convenience and ubiquity, digital music does come with more than a few disadvantages.
The takeaway: Back up your files. No one else will.
Grrr. I wrote this the last time this subject came up: “no cover” from the insurance company does not mean “no value.” It means “the risk / potential payout for the loss of a sizable digital file collection is uncontrollably large, and we decline to accept that bet.”
Insurance companies can be the same way about fine jewelry, and I distantly recall that large CD collections used to be treated the same way, back when CDs were the targets of thieves.
Other than that, good piece. For backup strategies, think of your digital photo collection: even if you could purchase insurance on your digital photos, you could not replace them. So: multiple copies, external hard disks, burned DVDs, offsite storage (because a house fire gets all backups stored at home), etc etc etc. Apply the same principles to your music collection.
Very good point. I realize now that there’s a little more to this than I’m eluding too. They said something else to your point, but I cannot think which publication mentioned it.
I believe it was that you couldn’t consider digital files as a completely irrecoverable loss, because they can be copied and stored.
I’ve updated to reflect your suggestion.
All the more reason to utilise cloud-based subscription services such as Spotify!
I know from personal experience that iTunes sometimes allows you to re-download songs that you have lost. You just have to send them an email asking politely.
For those of you interested in backing up digital music (and other) files, safeberg.com offers online backup and no hiccups whatsoever