MySpace may have lost more than a decade’s worth of user music

It’s not as if the internet needed another cautionary tale about backing up data, but for many artists, this news is heartbreaking nonetheless. MySpace has issued a tersely worded message noting that a huge amount of user uploaded music has been lost during a server migration.

The once dominant social network posted a note on its site reading, “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.”

Users have been reporting issues with music uploaded between 2003 and 2015 for around a year now. We’ve reached out to MySpace for additional insight into the issue — and whether what could well be millions of tracks are indeed permanently lost in the digital ether. Honestly though, things don’t look too good for MySpace or music uploaders.

Some are understandably skeptical of the whole situation. Others are suggesting this be seen as a cautionary tale for those relying on more contemporary services to host their art. For many, however, it’s a huge segment of formative internet years seemingly wiped away like a sand castle in the tide.

MySpace was, of course, a major internet presence in the mid-aughts. The company was purchased by NewsCorp for $580 million in 2005, becoming the most visited site in the States around the same time. Six years later, it was sold for a mere $35 million, having since been eclipsed by Facebook.

In recent years, MySpace has attempted to pivot to a music-first site, with middling results. Nothing gold can stay, as the saying goes — and for now, at least, that appears to include the volumes of music once hosted on its servers.