Face the music with download insurance

Even in Napster’s heyday, no one could have predicted that downloading music would become as common as it has – yet downloading has become one of the most favoured ways of getting hold of new music. There’s even a download chart now. But what happens if your computer crashes and you lose all your downloads?

According to research from Privilege Insurance, Brits would have to pay £257 each or £862 million in total to replace their music downloads. Collections increase in value by about £25 a year, but very few people actually take the time to back up their music. Twenty-four per cent of people have had their entire collections destroyed in the past and just 17 per cent have actually bothered to back up their collections.

More than half of us (57 per cent) update our collections to reflect new music formats and downloads from ITunes and similar sites are expected to increase by 315 per cent by 2010 – and that’s in Europe alone. And it’s not just the youngsters who are downloading in a big way – even those over 55 have about £1000 worth of downloaded music.

So what if all the music is lost? These days, you have to pay for legal downloads, so there is a cost attached to replacing it. Only three per cent of us have thought about this and have cover for electronic copies of music on our home insurance policies. That means 97 per cent of us would have to fork out of our own pockets if we needed to replace our digital music collections.

Privilege Insurance may have one answer. The insurance company has just announced that both new and existing home insurance customers will get up to £1,000 worth of cover for downloaded music that is stolen or damaged by an insured cause. So if there’s a flood or someone makes off with your computer, you could be covered. Just one thing, though, keep hard copies of your receipts so you can prove you paid for the music.