It's harder to lose a CD then a phone/ipod/computer. If you've ripped the CD to your computer the disc/case is just sitting on a shelf till next time you need it.

The hundreds of thousands of CDs stolen from cars across the nation disagree with you.

It's also easier to damage or completely disable a CD than it is a phone/ipod/computer. Short of willful destruction or storage medium failure will these devices render you unable to access your music. A simple scratch from using the CD will render it useless. How do you recover your tracks then?

The original point was: as long as the service is running and available, I can get another copy of my music. Now that the service is going down, it's up to you to have backups, the original source is gone. This was equated to losing a disc, and not being able to recover the music you legally purchased because you didn't have a backup, and the original was gone. A very good point, in my opinion.

I respectfully disagree.

In addition, it is far easier to backup an mp3 collection than a CD collection. You're already backing up your other data, aren't you?