The internet has managed to recover hundreds of thousands of songs deleted from social networking site Myspace, but it’s a far cry from the total losses.
Last month, it was revealed that Myspace had managed to lost all of the music uploaded to the site between 2003 and 2015.
A ubiquitous social networking site for years, Myspace long held pride of place as a music repository for young bands, aspiring talent, and even veteran acts wanting to make themselves accessible to their fanbase.
However, when news broke that some of the music on the service had been lost during a “server migration project”, users figured a site this large would likely have a backup.
Sadly, this wasn’t the case, and it was revealed that roughly 50 million tracks had been lost forever.
“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,” the site revealed in a statement.
Notably, they also shared a somewhat hypocritical addendum; “We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies.”
However, it turns out that not all is lost, with some enterprising web sleuths tracking down some of the lost music.
ANNOUNCING THE MYSPACE MUSIC DRAGON HOARD, a 450,000 song collection of mp3s from 2008-2010 on MySpace, gathered before they were all "deleted" by mistake. https://t.co/oIunuHF7wc includes a link to a special custom search and play mechanism that lets you search and play songs. pic.twitter.com/aGkFPDBN7r
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) April 4, 2019
As The Verge notes, users over at the The Internet Archive have managed to track down and upload roughly 490,000 music files that were shared to Myspace between 2008 and 2010.
Dubbed ‘The Myspace Dragon Hoard (2008-2010)’, this collection of music weighs approximately 1.3 terabytes, and was sourced during an “anonymous academic study” that took place between the titular years.
If you’re eager to see if the music you’re after is available in this collection, they’ve also provided users with a viewable index where you can search through the songs to see if what you’re after is included.
Of course, considering this is barely one percent of the entire music database that is now lost to time, there’s no saying whether other hoards of music exist, or if we will one day see them once again.
Whatever the case, some distraught users are undoubtedly stoked at the notion of hearing some of their long-lost tracks once again.
Head here to check out the salvaged tunes, and check out one of my personal favourite Myspace discoveries (which is also present in the ‘Dragon Hoard’) from defunct English prog-rockers Of The I, below.
Check out Of The I’s ‘Single Units’:
