CD-RW

A CD is a digital medium is just ones and zeros that your data/music is translated into. There is no degredation in sound quality like a cassette. Now as the CD gets older (may decay, get scratched, chipped) it may get harder to read and the ones and zeros may get missed thus eventually corrupting your data and thus your music.

Unlike cassettes sound quality wont degrade, a 100th generation CD will have the same exact sound quality as the orginal store bought disc.

And that is what scares the Entertainment industry about CD and DVD

It won't get SIGNIFICANTLY or NOTICEABLY worse (jitter may increase since it's PCM) until the datastream is so bad you can't stand to listen to it.

I have noticed that it seems a bit easier to scratch CD-R's and CD-RW's than regular CD's you buy at the store. Could this be true, or is it just coincidence?

It's very true Ogre, but in the real world, unless you're totally careless - you'll never damage any CD or DVD.

Another question:

If you burn a CD-RW as a data CD, can you re-record it as a music CD or does it permanently become a data CD? And vice-versa?

*bump

I believe you can. I don't have a cd player that plays cd-rw but I would assume it wouldn't matter. A cd-rw won't play in most cd-rom drives....

All you have to do is reformat the CD-RW and it will be like a new disc, and you can do anything with it.