Myspace May Have Just Lost Over A Decades' Worth Of Music & Photos

To anyone who uploaded, well, anything to Myspace years ago and thought, "Oh, well, I can still go find it later if I want — duh, it's the internet," sorry, but you were wrong. As reported by Tech Crunch, Myspace may have lost 12 years worth of music, photos, and videos, dating between 2003 and 2015, during a server migration. This is great news if you had an embarrassing attempt at a singing career when you were 17, but awful news if "download old Myspace photos and backup hard drive" has been on your to-do list for the last 10 years.

The company said in a statement,

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. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com.

Bustle has also reached out to Myspace for comment, and will update this post upon response. In the meantime, if your information was lost in the migration, I really hope you saved a copy of your scene haircut so you can show your children. In fact, just go print out a hardcopy of it now if you can. We can't let things like gazing upward at a digital camera in a bathroom mirror become distant memories.

According to Brooklyn Vegan, Reddit users have been talking about songs not playing on MySpace for about a year now, but an official public update didn't come until now.

As multiple sites reporting on the news have pointed out, tech entrepreneur and former CTO of Kickstarter Andy Baio tweeted about the news and is skeptical of the reason the years of information were lost. He wrote, "I'm deeply skeptical this was an accident. 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.'"

Bustle has reached out to Myspace for additional comment. If you would like to attempt to find your old information and see if it wasn't lost, there are instructions available here.

While Myspace used to be one of the most popular sites in the United States — in 2006, it was reported to be more visited than Google — things have taken a major turn in the years since. In 2009, Facebook surpassed Myspace as the most popular social networking site in the country. Then in 2011, ownership changed and in the following couple of years the site relaunched with more of a focus on music. It was once all about sharing messages and photos with friends (and organizing your Top 8), but now MySpace looks completely different, and this is the official description:

Showcasing artists and their work, the site gives people access to 53 million tracks and videos-the world's largest digital music library. With roots in music and social, the platform is built to empower all artists-from musicians and designers to writers and photographers-helping them connect with audiences, collaborators, and partners to achieve their goals.

Myspace isn't the same, and now, it's not even hosting the old information. That said, there is a lesson in all of this: We might say things live forever on the internet, but that's only sort of true. Save what you want now. Don't wait.