MySpace the once-dominant social media platform that was largely subsumed by Facebook may have lost a decade’s worth of music uploaded by users, the company says.
MySpace started in 2003 and quickly gained traction as a platform for uploading and sharing music, particularly for new bands trying to find an audience.
The fact that it helped launch artists like Arctic Monkeys, Panic! At The Disco, Sean Kingston and Kate Nash — as well as its Justin Timberlake-themed redesign gave it a certain amount of credibility.
But that might have been erased, along with some 50 million songs. This weekend, a banner on the site announced that audio files uploaded more than three years may no longer be available.
According to the site’s banner announcement, “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.” Some estimate nearly 50 million songs from 2003 to 2015 have been lost. According to MySpace users on Reddit, all pre-2015 music stopped working about a year ago. Customers were first told MySpace would correct the issue and later told the files were corrupted and couldn’t be transferred to the new site.
The banner announcement, which has now been removed, was rather brief and left plenty of room for question. You won’t find answers from MySpace on Twitter, as the company hasn’t tweeted since 2017, and its last official press release is dated 2015. MySpace did offer the email address of its Data Protection Officer ([email protected]), for anyone seeking more information.
