This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Business News Digital
Nearly half a million ‘lost’ MySpace songs uncovered
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 5 April 2019
Nearly half a million MP3 files thought to be lost after MySpace ‘accidentally’ wiped its pre-2015 archive have been found. The uncovered trove of music files has been made available on the Internet Archive.
Jason Scott of said Internet Archive explains: “This set of 450,000 songs was [collected] by an anonymous academic group who were studying music networks and grabbed 1.3 terabytes of MP3s to study from MySpace in roughly 2008-2010 to do so. And someone asked me, ‘hey, do you want these, since they were lost?’ Yes, yes I did”.
The current owner of the once dominant social network recently admitted that it had lost all photos, videos and music files older than three years during a server move. Users were then told that they should “retain … back up copies” of files uploaded to the site, which wasn’t a very helpful thing to say just after deleting the thing you think they should be backing up.
Confirming that within this batch of 450,000 former MySpace MP3s there are actually files that it was previously thought had fallen into the black hole of tech history, Scott tweeted: “First confirmed ‘lost’ song recovered from this hoard: The Alpha Conspiracy – ‘Defend Yourself (Swing Mix)’. Creator told me it was gone forever, now it’s not. Get dancing”.
Or just stay where you are and do nothing. If you want to have a sniff around for some classic MySpace tracks you thought you’d never hear again, take a look here.
