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Music

18th Mar 2019

MySpace admits it has accidentally lost every song uploaded between 2003 and 2015

Marc Mayo

The tireless work of thousands, lost, in but a heartbeat

It has been revealed that MySpace lost all the music posted onto the social network from 2003 to 2015 after an error in transferring the files.

A discussion channel on Reddit realised a bunch of songs had simply stopped working and contacted the website operators to find out why.

In response, it was initially claimed that there was an issue with all songs uploaded more than three years ago – and that it would be fixed. However it was later admitted that all the files were corrupted when they were transferred for a website update.

It was also confirmed that there is no way to fix the issue, meaning the work of countless artists who were unable to keep physical copies of their music has been lost.

Once among the most popular websites on the planet, MySpace’s heyday in the mid-2000s saw it comfortably outperform social network rival Facebook thanks to its popularity as a music and chat hub.

It inspired thousands of artists to upload their works and share them with prospective fans, the likes of Lily Allen, Enter Shikari, Bring Me The Horizon and Panic! At The Disco starting out on the network before hitting the big time.

MySpace itself hit difficulties a number of years ago and was bought by American conglomerate Time Inc in 2016 for around $35 million, having previously been thought to be worth around $500 million.