Hope You Didn't Have Any Old Music on MySpace

More than a decade ago, MySpace reigned supreme in social media. And the company now has bad news for all those who uploaded music and other media to their accounts: It's all gone. "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," says a company statement. "We apologize for the inconvenience." The loss covers everything going back to the company's launch in 2003, reports the BBC. Tech writer Graham Cluley takes MySpace to task for not having a backup and calls this an "appalling cultural loss," given that MySpace had more than 50 million songs.

Users began reporting trouble about a year ago, and MySpace responded that it was investigating. The new statement is the bad-news result, and some think it's a little fishy. "I'm deeply skeptical this was an accident," writes Andy Baio, who helped begin Kickstarter. "Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than 'we can't be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s.'" Regardless, Boing Boing notes that the gaffe offers up a useful lesson: Don't rely on such platforms—that includes Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr—to function as a personal archive. Use other services created for that purpose, or make your own backups. (More MySpace stories.)