Now, a portion of those files have been recovered thanks to digital archivists. The Internet Archive has launched a searchable 450,000 song collection dubbed the "Myspace Dragon Hoard," which brings together MP3 files from 2008 through 2010.
As site archivist Jason Scott explained on Twitter, the collection of songs was passed along by "an anonymous academic group who were studying music networks," who nabbed the sizable collection for study purposes.
The collection allows users to search and play files from the database using a searcher dubbed "Hobbit." Users in the comments told Scott they had already found early uploads from the likes of 2 Chainz, Nicki Minaj, RZA, Donald Glover and more.
You can check out the archive over here.
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
This set of 450,000 songs was done by an anonymous academic group who were studying music networks and grabbed 1.3 terabytes of mp3s to study from MySpace in roughly 2008-2010 to do so. And someone asked me "hey, do you want these, since they were lost?" Yes, yes I did. pic.twitter.com/ZqQC8bYfz1
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) April 4, 2019
If you have any lying around, hit me up. Also, please understand the Hobbit, the searcher that goes through the Dragon Hoard, can take a bit of time to spin up the considerable search index. We're optimizing and fixing that search up, and it will all be open-sourced. NOW DANCE
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) April 4, 2019
First confirmed "lost" song recovered from this hoard: "the alpha conspiracy - defend yourself swing mix". Creator told me it was gone forever, now it's not. Get dancing
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) April 4, 2019
