Newcomers to the internet may not be as familiar with it, but back in the day Myspace was a pretty big deal.
For a time in the mid-2000s, Myspace was more popular than Google and Facebook, and it was the place for bands to promote their music online.
Well, if you were in a band in the noughties I hope you weren’t relying upon Myspace to store your recordings safely.
Sign up to our newsletterA year ago, users described how they were finding they couldn’t play some music tracks on Myspace anymore.
Myspace said it was working on the issue, but now they’ve come clean about what’s actually happened: the music has been lost.
The loss of users’ data isn’t because a malicious hacker has compromised its systems and wiped its backups, but because Myspace simply didn’t bother to make a backup in the first place.
According to a pop-up message that appears when you try to access the site, videos and photos have also been lost alongside the audio files:
“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. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at [email protected]“
But it’s ok, because Myspace has “apologised” for the “inconvenience.”
Sheesh. Hope none of you had some irreplaceable music or photos up there.
In 2014, Myspace was claiming to host over 53 million songs on 14.2 million artist-profile pages… this is an appalling cultural loss.
Remember – you cannot trust the likes of Myspace to look after your data forever. Use internet services to archive your content if you wish, but you’d be wise to have your own backup of anything valuable too.
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Grahm,
You, yourself, have said "The cloud is just another word for someone else's computer". Yet you recommend cloud backup.
The reality is each of us is ultimately responsible for our own data. Make backups! and more backups and keep them off line. Hard drives are cheap, US$40 for a 2TB, Raid and NAS devices are also cheap US$100~$250 can get you a network storage, even ones that sleep when not accessed,
The cloud is just not a safe place. Your whole blog is about Internet insecurity. Frankly, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." So if you put your data on the cloud, MS 'one drive' or azure, Google's Cloud, and the like, there is only one reason they give storage away for free. It is to mine your data. Security is the responsibility of the user. Insecurity is big business. Follow the money.
My recommendation isn't cloud backup. My recommendation is don't have only one backup. :)
So, online backups are ok and nice and convenient (usual caveats about encryption etc for anything private or sensitive), but make sure it's not your only backup.
Equally, it's ok if you had your music on Myspace – but look what happens if it was your only copy of that music.