Last Updated on: 18th March 2019, 05:42 pm
Poor Myspace hasn’t had a whole lot going for it for quite a while, and now, thanks to what may or may not be an oopsie, it has even less.
Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.
The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations.
More than 50m tracks from 14 million artists have been lost, including songs that led to the rise of the “Myspace Generation” cohort of artists, such as Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys and Yeasayer.The site now has a banner at the top of the site telling visitors: “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 apologise for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your backup copies. If you would like more information, please contact our data protection officer.”
That bit about backup copies is really rubbing it in there, guys.
But there’s a good lesson in here about the dangers of entrusting large portions of your life purely to online technology and business and thinking it’s going to be ok. Trust us, it isn’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say something like “I don’t have to save this picture, it’s up on Facebook if I need it,” but I cringe a little whenever I do. If something is important to you, take the extra time to make sure it’s safe.