I think the 3-5 year estimate is really more likely something told by companies who are trying to sell you a "100-year" disc. I've been burning CDs for over ten years and have put many of my older, 5-10-year-old CDs onto DVD and while there have been one or two that have developed little blank spots inside the reflective layer, the vast majority have been perfect.
Back in the early days, Kodak blank CDs were one of the few that had the gold layer, and there was a lot of speculation that this made them automatically better than the usual green or blue layer. There were also stories that the color didn't make a whit of difference. Apparently, the official CD spec calls for TDK's Azo, which is dark blue.
I would tend to lean towards burning multiples on "normal" media rather than paying big bucks for "archival" media. I certainly don't buy that archival discs can't go bad before 100 years, and my discs only need to last until the next generation of recording media. In five years from now, we'll probably all be using cheap BluRay or HD-DVD writers and media and converting DVD discs to them.
Once I've converted a CD to a DVD, it goes on one of the spindles that the blank discs come on - it seems like I've got a million of those around. I label the outside (like games, utilities, music, videos, etc) and stick 'em on a shelf out of the way. If the DVD goes bad prematurely, I can always go back and check the original CD, too.
