The story about CD's going 'bad' goes from the old radio days. When the radio stations moved from vinyl to CD, they do't use the jewel boxes, so they were writing tags with sharpies. The acid from the ink is what caused the damage to the CDs.
The awful truth about CDs, do they have the same shelve life as LP's ?
The answer is properly not. Recent studies have shown that the chemicals used in their manufacture of CDs have reduced their life expectancy to ten years, not all but many, as per Paul Mcgowans email. The suggestion was given that if you have suspect CD's they should be re-copied. But my question is how do you identify these? I can tell you that I have a great deal of LPs and I can play anyone of these with great success and some are 40 years old. This no doubt would give some audiophiles another good reason to hold onto their belief that LPs are the way to go.