Most CDs that you purchase from retail stores are sold in jewel cases. Durable, slim and designed to protect your music, the CD jewel case has been an industry standard since CDs first burst upon the market. Having spare CD jewel cases around is always a good idea--for discs you burn or to replace jewel cases that may have cracked or broken.

To ensure maximum quality of playback, you need to keep your CDs in pristine condition. Keeping your compact disc inside a jewel case keeps out harmful dust and protects the CD from scratches that will cause your music to skip or break up. The lasers that read compact discs are extremely sensitive, and keeping your music in a CD jewel case is essential to keeping the playing area of your discs clean and scratch free.

With the explosion of downloadable music files, and with CD burners becoming standard issue on home computers, homemade music CDs are extremely popular. Blank media discs are so popular, in fact, that most people tend to buy them in bulk stacks of 50, 100, 500 or more. These bulk packs usually do not include any way to store a CD safely after you've burned it, so investing in packs of empty jewel cases ensures that the music you make will be well preserved.

CDs aren't just for music anymore. CD-Rs have begun to supplant floppy discs as the most popular way to save and back up data files. Just like a music CD, it is important to keep the bottom surface of a data CD clean and free of scratches to make sure that your data isn't lost or corrupted. A CD jewel case is an inexpensive, convenient way to protect your digital information for a long time.