Insurance risk for downloaders

Monday, 05 January 2009 04:00

Music lovers are being urged to insure their collections, which could be worth thousands of pounds.

A poll from the Performing Right Society (PRS), the organisation that collects royalties on behalf of composers, found the average music collection is worth over £1,000, but only one in five people have it insured.

Almost a third of people surveyed said that worries about a recession were to blame for not taking out insurance.

Steve Porter, chief executive of PRS, said: "Most people don't realise just how much money they have spent in building up their music collections; more so nowadays as they often don't have a physical item to show for it.

"However, with digital downloads increasing in popularity and some technology limiting the options to back this up, it is possible that the loss of the computer could have a very serious financial impact. We are, therefore, advising everyone to get both their physical and downloaded digital music insured."

Over half of the people surveyed owned music collections worth over £500, with one in five owning collections worth over £3,000. The results also revealed that the average downloaded MP3 collection was now worth well over £450.

Darren Black, home expert at Confused.com, said: "Most home insurance policies can replace the cost of losing an iPod or phone, for example, but very few can replace all of the content.

"In fact, even if the policy pledges to replace lost music, it is extremely unlikely the insurers would honour this without receipts of purchase. For this reason, it is important to always save those iTunes receipt emails to a hard disk."

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