Britain is a nation of digital wasters, spending £7.6bn on music tracks that are later lost due to our failure to back up.

Research from price-comparison site Moneysupermarket.com found that 62 per cent of people in the UK downloaded music from the internet.

However, slack data policies lead to many of the tracks we download being lost in a digital 'black hole' when hard drives fail or our computers fall prey to viruses.

James Parker, commercial manager of broadband at Moneysupermarket.com, said: "At 79p for a single or £7.99 for an album, a lot of money is invested in digital collections, particularly when you consider most people have over a 1,000 tracks."

Parker blamed people's attitudes towards digital files for the loss of the music.

"Because MP3s are intangible, it's too easy to forget the file is actually worth something and has been paid for. If you'd bought a CD you can actually hold in your hand you'd take much more care of it," he said.

www.moneysupermarket.com

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