Interesting rebuttal to the CD-R longevity issue a while ago

[daede]

The vendor claims that a 24-karat gold reflective layer, high-performance dye and a scratch-resistant technology will give the new product up to six times longer life than traditional media. Memorex claims a CD archival life of up to 300 years and a DVD archival life of up to 100 years.

"Laboratory tests prove Memorex Pro Gold Media to be resistant to the effects of rapid, artificial ageing such as ultraviolet light, heat and humidity exposure thanks in part to gold's inert characteristics that prevent oxidation, a common cause of failure for most recordable media during long-term storage," the company says in a press release announcing the upcoming products.

Memorex Pro Gold CD-R discs are rated to record at 52x speed and have 700MB of data storage, equivalent to approximately 80 minutes of audio recording time. Memorex Pro Gold DVD-R discs record at 8x speed and hold 4.7GB of data, or about 120 minutes of video.

Sounds good to me. Link here.

[A-Barr]

I have a hard time believing claims that can't be proven until the year 2306.
I know where you're coming from though, I'd like my future kids and grandkids to be able to hear my music, but I thought the cause of disc failure was the glue between the plastic and the metal drying up and failing, and it seems to me like there are a lot of effects of time that can't be recreated in the lab, so I'm skeptical. If you want the ultimate in archiving, how does vinyl sound? That stuff should last a couple thousand years at least and as long as it's protected, I don't think there's really anything that can go wrong. You don't even need electricity to play it! So 500 years from now, after nuclear war and global warming have knocked mankind back to the stone age, they could still concievably figure out how to play a record - but they sure are harder to make than cd's....

[chris harris]

I just think that people need to accept that "archiving" is a process and not a one shot deal. Even if your cd lasts 300 years, what are they going to stick it in?
Standards change. Things get better. You can bet your ass that people with important masters on DATs have been transferring those to other, more modern media.

If we could find a way to make our society really care about culture and arts, the archiving industry could probably provide a growing number of people jobs forever.