Question about "cloudy" CD surface

So, a few months ago a got a sealed copy of Metallica's Master of Puppets from DCC, and it had this "cloudy" appearance:


The disc rips securely and plays fine, so I wasn't worried about it much, but should I be worried about it? I didn't ask to return it as I said before, it was sealed and it wasn't the sellers fault for not telling me information about the disc.

 

Some used dvd's I've purchased at flea markets have been cloudy but they've all played fine. Maybe sitting in the heat and sun all day has something to do with it.

 

Should be fine...

 

Any exact reason why?

 

That's not clouds in the plastic layer. It's clouds caused by the metalwork, clouds on the stamper. It comes from developing the photo resist layer during glass mastering. The chemicals used leave swirled stains, which you can see through the underside of the disc. Nothing to worry about, as it's strictly a cosmetic defect, which doesn't affect electronics testing or disc playback.

 

Attention to all those who say that vinyl is no good because it degrades over time. It happens faster to CDs....and they don't even have to be played for this to happen!

 

Thank you, just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.

 

It really depends on the quality of the CD imo. These audiophile gold CDs and SHM-CDs shouldn’t decay over time nearly as quickly as you think.

 

I have regular 'ol CDs that are coming up on ~40 years old and have nothing wrong with them at all. There are a lot of factors that go into whether a CD lasts or not with a major one being how the item was stored. Most of the problems that have affected CDs "going bad" affect less than 1% of my collection and I have 4,000+ CDs.

I like vinyl too. No need to turn this into another format war thread over ignorance.

@StimpyWan's explanation seems correct. Your CD is fine, rip it to archive and play the physical disc if you want, should be fine.