MySpace has lost 12 years worth of music

Over 50 million uploaded pieces of music have been deleted from Myspace.

Word spread over the weekend after a user on Reddit’s r/technology Subreddit made a post outlining how, last year, they noticed that all of their music uploaded from 2015 and before had disappeared. 

The once ubiquitous social media platform has since confirmed that, following a “server migration project”, all of those files were corrupted and are, indeed, gone for good.

A statement at the top of Myspace’s current homepage reads, ”As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The vast archive of music, photography and film had been uploaded by over 14 million users over the course of 12 years.

After being founded in 2003 and bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2005, Myspace became the largest social media platform in the world. In 2006, it was the second most visited site in the U.S., second only to Google. Toward the end of the noughties however, it would be gradually dethroned by emerging platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In 2016, Myspace was acquired Time Inc. 

Andy Baio, who is one of the team behind Kicksarter, was one of the first to break the news over Twitter this weekend. He has also expressed scepticism as to whether the incident has indeed been an accident.

I'm deeply skeptical this was an accident. Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than "we can't be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s."

— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) March 18, 2019

Was just talkin bout this a few days ago.

They had demos. First songs. They had communications. Connections between artists. An important archive of youth culture. And completely fucked it. https://t.co/BZqyTHHBzO

— LUCKYME® (@LuckyMe) March 17, 2019