MySpace has admitted that they have lost every bit of music uploaded to the site between 2003 and 2015 – that’s over 50 million songs, from 14 million artists.

Reports on Reddit revealed that the tracks are no longer accessible due to errors arising from a “server migration project”. A grey bar at the top of MySpace’s music page reads that “any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available... (we) suggest that you retain your back up copies”. The song links had not been working for a year already, but the site had previously said they were working on a fix.

During the 2000s, MySpace was the primary platform to hear new music, launching the careers of countless bands who uploaded their earliest songs and demos to the website. The site was sold to News Corporation in 2005 for a staggering $580 million, before quickly losing ground to emerging social networks like Facebook. It was sold again in a joint purchase between Specific Media Group and, for some reason, Justin Timberlake, in 2011, albeit for a far smaller $35 million.

Most of the music that’s been lost will, admittedly, be quite bad, but there’s something sad about a decade-plus of people’s creativity being lost forever. While it might seem that the internet is permanent, it can be incredibly ephemeral – everything from a website altering an old design, to users uploading audio files to a server, can be lost overnight. At the very least, this should serve as a reminder to back up your favourite Soundcloud tracks.