thearchivist.funMySpace loses years of uploaded music
In March 2019 users noticed that music uploaded to MySpace in its earlier years no longer played. MIT Technology Review reported on 19 March 2019 that the company's data protection officer attributed the loss to a server migration, that the company first said it was working on the problem and then admitted the data was gone, and that no backup existed. The company's figure was over 50 million songs from 14 million artists, covering music from 2015 and earlier. A small rescue followed. Gigazine reported that an anonymous academic group had collected about 490,000 MP3 files, uploaded to MySpace between 2008 and 2010, and passed them to the Internet Archive. The set is 1.3 TB in 144 ZIP files, under one percent of the estimated loss, and it matches a MySpace notice that files uploaded more than three years earlier were no longer accessible. The case is unusual because the loss was not a planned closing. The site stayed online while a large part of what it had hosted disappeared.
Context and provenance
Keep two statements apart: the platform's own count of what was lost, and the volunteer count of what was recovered. Neither says how many of those songs existed anywhere else. Some artists may have kept their own masters, but a release's page and its surrounding context were held by the platform.
For any MySpace track, ask three questions: was it uploaded before the cutoff the company described, is it among the recovered 2008 to 2010 files, and does the artist hold another copy? The answers decide whether a claim of loss is accurate for that track. The totals given by the company and by the rescuers describe different groups.
Transmission timeline
- 2019-03-19
MIT Technology Review reports that pre-2016 music has been lost.
- 2019-04
A recovered set of about 490,000 files from 2008 to 2010 is reported.
Why it matters
A site can keep running while its past disappears; an unplanned loss with no backup is a different problem from a planned shutdown.
What remains uncertain
The cutoff year is stated differently between the headline ('first 12 years') and the body (2015 and earlier). The size of the loss is the company's figure and has not been audited.
Sources and evidence
- MIT Technology Review: MySpace has lost all the music uploaded during its first 12 years
Server migration cited by the company, no backups, over 50 million songs from 14 million artists, music from 2015 and earlier.
- Gigazine: About 500,000 music files of MySpace's lost data recovered by academic group
490,000 MP3 files from 2008 to 2010, 1.3 TB in 144 ZIP files, under 1 percent of the loss, donated to the Internet Archive.
Editorial review: 2026-10-22. New evidence may change this account.