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Speaker 1: This is an iHeart original.

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Speaker 2: We were trying anything and everything to recreate a business

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Speaker 2: that would be thriving because at that time and forgetting,

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Speaker 2: the music industry is getting a black eye. You know,

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Speaker 2: they had just come years before, come off the whole

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Speaker 2: road of the guys in Metallica attempting to sue college

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Speaker 2: students for downloading music a nap stair and so what

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Speaker 2: do you have now? You've got an opportunity for fans

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Speaker 2: and fans to work together, and that harmony has was

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Speaker 2: totally unique to my Space at the time, and I'd

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Speaker 2: probably argue, I don't know if there's that harmony today,

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Speaker 2: even though from great services out there, they're just much

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Speaker 2: more compartmentalized.

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Speaker 1: I'm Joy McNeil, and this is main accounts the story

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Speaker 1: of MySpace.

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Speaker 3: Our record label was like, you know, you guys need

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Speaker 3: to on MySpace page.

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Speaker 1: You were like, really, that's Damon Krakowski. He plays in

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Speaker 1: the duo Damon and Naomi, and before that he was

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Speaker 1: in the bands Galaxy five hundred.

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Speaker 3: I've been in bands since the late eighties, so that

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Speaker 3: means I started in an analog world, and by our

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Speaker 3: third record we were mixing digitally and starting to release

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Speaker 3: on CB, but it wasn't until a good deal after

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Speaker 3: that that we actually started using computers in our work

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Speaker 3: in any serious manner.

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Speaker 1: In addition to music, these days, Damon writes about sound

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Speaker 1: and digital culture. Check out his newsletter Data Drummer. It's great.

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Speaker 1: He's written tech criticism on streaming services, algorithms, and distribution

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Speaker 1: of music online. But back in the nineties, Damon wasn't

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Speaker 1: online that much. He knew what the internet was, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a big part of his life. One thing

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Speaker 1: he did notice when he got online was that Galaxy

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Speaker 1: five hundred fans were converging and hang out there meeting

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Speaker 1: each other.

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Speaker 3: In terms of music fandom. Yes, there were fans out there.

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Speaker 3: We knew that. Again, we weren't really engaging it very

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Speaker 3: much ourselves, so it was just kind of happening without

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Speaker 3: our input. But there was a mailing list that developed

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Speaker 3: that's still going. It's a Galax of one hundred fan

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Speaker 3: site run by a lovely guy in England named Andy Aldrich.

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Speaker 3: Andy was there kind of like keeping the flame alive,

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Speaker 3: I guess for our band without our input, even really

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Speaker 3: without our knowledge. But that crossed over into the analog

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Speaker 3: world because when we tried to get our records repressed.

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Speaker 3: It turned out that A and R people, of course,

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Speaker 3: were aware of what was going on out there, and

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Speaker 3: they checked and they were like, Wow, they're fans actually

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Speaker 3: talking about your band. Maybe it is worth putting these

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Speaker 3: records back in print.

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Speaker 1: In the nineties, just as online communities were entry the mainstream,

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Speaker 1: from BBS to AOL, you could pretty much name an

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Speaker 1: artist Kate Bush, Wu Tang Clan, George Michael and find

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Speaker 1: a list serve or a message board or another online

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Speaker 1: space to meet other fans and share stories. They were

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Speaker 1: also sharing music online in the early nineties. This might

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Speaker 1: have been pen pals exchanging bootleg cassettes and mixtapes. By

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Speaker 1: the end of the decade, you didn't have to know

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Speaker 1: the person you were trading music with. Napster, which launched

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, appear to appear file sharing program

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Speaker 1: let you trade MP three's anonymously with other users. The

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Speaker 1: fate of Napster might take another podcast to explain, but

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Speaker 1: the basic thing to know is Napster had an incredible

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Speaker 1: search functionality. People found music on Napster because they search

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Speaker 1: for an artist's name. If people didn't know who an

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Speaker 1: artist was, they weren't looking for that music. But there

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Speaker 1: were other music sites like MP three dot com, which

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Speaker 1: launched in nineteen ninety seven, where unsigned bands could upload

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Speaker 1: tracks and create fan pages to promote their work. MP

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Speaker 1: three dot com, like Napster, had its fill of copyright battles,

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Speaker 1: and it was eventually acquired by Vivenda Universal. By two

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Speaker 1: thousand and two, it was kind of a ghost town.

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Speaker 1: The musicians who had been using it were looking for

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Speaker 1: a new platform to share music. Many of those artists

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Speaker 1: went to MySpace.

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Speaker 3: I remember using our computer to log into Napster, you know,

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Speaker 3: and figure that out, and lo and behold they were

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Speaker 3: like Robert Wyatt bootlegs that I've been looking for on there.

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Speaker 3: So I thought, well, this is cool, you know, I mean,

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Speaker 3: why not.

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Speaker 1: Someone like dam who already had an audience with Galaxy

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Speaker 1: five hundred didn't necessarily need a MySpace page, But for

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Speaker 1: someone who was just getting started, it was a breakthrough.

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Speaker 1: Artists could connect with producers. People were getting discovered on MySpace.

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Speaker 1: Kate Nash, Calvin Harris, Arctic Monkeys, even Adele. She had

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Speaker 1: a friend who posted her demos to MySpace early on.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, he put them on MySpace in two thousand and four,

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Speaker 4: and then MySpace got huge, and then I got addicted

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Speaker 4: to it by emailming and networking and finding friends and

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Speaker 4: stuff on there, and then I got signed.

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Speaker 1: That's right, almost twenty years ago. If you were clicking

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Speaker 1: around MySpace late at night, you might have stumbled on

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Speaker 1: a super early demo of Adele singing. Countless artists use

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Speaker 1: the platform, like Sean Kingston.

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Speaker 5: Yo, what up, it's a boy Shawn Kingston shout said

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Speaker 5: the MySpace. I must say that my Space is done

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Speaker 5: a lot for me, like it really changed my life

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Speaker 5: over just the past you know, year and a half.

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Speaker 1: Calvin Harris was living with his parents in Scotland and

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Speaker 1: working in a fish factory when he got discovered on MySpace.

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Speaker 1: Timing was everything.

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Speaker 3: My Space is kind of not what it was.

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Speaker 2: I think my little window where I got signed. I

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Speaker 2: was very fortunate to join it when I did, and.

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Speaker 4: I was kind of proactive as well as a hussled

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Speaker 4: people MySpace.

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Speaker 1: The company recognized this opportunity. Artists on MySpace meant fans

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Speaker 1: on MySpace, fans who would continue to log in and

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Speaker 1: stay engaged on the site.

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Speaker 6: The people that really launched my Space were the promoters

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Speaker 6: and were the DJs and of course the artists.

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Speaker 2: Do you start with the artists.

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Speaker 6: They bring on their fan bases, You start with the

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Speaker 6: DJs they bring in, you know, their fan bases.

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Speaker 2: What was happening on MySpace for music was this is

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Speaker 2: the first opportunity where community was built around talent in

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Speaker 2: a way that talent could interact with digitally.

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Speaker 6: Way we recreated before creatives. We were different than for instance,

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Speaker 6: we took off because we had the artists.

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Speaker 1: Who was sixty that's Roslin Alba cober Ubius, who worked

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Speaker 1: as head of Artist Relations at MySpace and Josh Brooks,

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Speaker 1: the former vice president of Programming in Music at MySpace.

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Speaker 1: Roslin helped set up MySpace Music, which was a feature

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Speaker 1: of the social network developed to make it easier for

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Speaker 1: artists to upload songs and share them. The reason music

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Speaker 1: took off on MySpace comes back to the customizable pages.

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Speaker 1: Just like users could edit the code to their profiles

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Speaker 1: and add blingees or figure out the CSS code to

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Speaker 1: make the background pink, users could edit the code to

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Speaker 1: embed content onto their pages. Like playlist dot com and

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Speaker 1: early streaming.

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Speaker 2: Apples, dot com was basically a streaming module that was

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Speaker 2: embedded in the MySpace pages at the time, and so

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Speaker 2: this allowed me to actually grab music that I want

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Speaker 2: to listen to and broadcast it out through my page,

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Speaker 2: so people can come to my page figure out what

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Speaker 2: kind of music I like is they can hear it,

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Speaker 2: or I can actually share that flee list as well.

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Speaker 1: MySpace users would also embed the YouTube player on their pages.

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Speaker 1: YouTube had seemed to a lot of users like just

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Speaker 1: another site to scavenge for content to put on your

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Speaker 1: MySpace profile.

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Speaker 2: There was a big controversy I want to say maybe

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Speaker 2: two thousand and six ish where we actually removed the

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Speaker 2: YouTube widget from MySpace pages and it created a huge

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Speaker 2: controversy and Chris and Tom ended up making a decision

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Speaker 2: to put back on there. But we were the only

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Speaker 2: means of traffic for YouTube at the time, and so

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Speaker 2: it was pretty amazing that now, I'll you know, what

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Speaker 2: a behemo of a machine that is now, but it

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Speaker 2: literally had its start on MySpace as a profile.

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Speaker 1: That on coming up after the break MySpace Brings Music.

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Speaker 1: The concert dubbed Operation MySpace, was hosted by comedian Carlos

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Speaker 1: Mencia to the Troops in two thousand and eight. MySpace

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Speaker 1: Stage is sort of USO show for the ed Hardy

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Speaker 1: generation in Kuwait for members of the military stationed overseas.

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Speaker 1: It was called Operation MySpace.

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Speaker 2: It really started off as just like a scene of

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Speaker 2: an idea saying, look, I remember the Bob Hope style

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Speaker 2: shows in Vietnam, so used to go into hot zones

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Speaker 2: and actually bring music in entertainment.

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Speaker 1: That's Josh Brooks again, former vice president of Programming in

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Speaker 1: Music at MySpace.

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Speaker 2: And I'm thinking to myself, I know just through friends

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Speaker 2: of friends that tons of troops use MySpace as a

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Speaker 2: communication tool of their family around the world. So if

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Speaker 2: you're stationed in the Middle East, you're using my Space

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Speaker 2: to communicate back with your family and friends. And so

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Speaker 2: you know, since we were doing so many innovative shows

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Speaker 2: in the music and comedy, we said, all right, So

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Speaker 2: I actually cold called the Pentagon and found that I

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Speaker 2: spoke to I think it was an undersecretary about like

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Speaker 2: health and Human Services or sort of more of the

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Speaker 2: obscure secretaries. And then I got a meeting about a

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Speaker 2: month later, flew to the Pentagon, met with their team

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Speaker 2: and they have essentially like a USO like group that

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Speaker 2: kind of works with US and the idea was, we

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Speaker 2: want to do a live show in a hot zone

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Speaker 2: where we know the troops are going to love it,

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Speaker 2: where we know we could stream it around the world

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Speaker 2: with bands and comedians that resonated with MySpace as well

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Speaker 2: as these people. So at the time we had Carlos Vincia,

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Speaker 2: Jessica Simpson, the Pussycat Dolls, the band filter that disturbed

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Speaker 2: everybody else.

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Speaker 6: I did say Pussycat Dolls because it's a lot of

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Speaker 6: dudes in the Army like yeah, like like how they

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Speaker 6: used to bring marily My Rold bring the Pussycat Dolls.

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Speaker 6: But I was like, yeah, hot girls like that are amazing,

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Speaker 6: and pay them what they're worth. A million dollars done.

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Speaker 1: That's Roslyn albat Cobarrubius again, who worked as head of

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Speaker 1: artist relations at MySpace, And this was the Pussycat Dolls

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Speaker 1: at Operation MySpace.

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Speaker 7: Operation MySpace.

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Speaker 2: We are the pussy Cat Doll and We're away.

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Speaker 1: They were a huge hit. Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer

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Speaker 1: of the Pussycat Dolls, pointed out why my Space was

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Speaker 1: important to the troops and a dedication she made during

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Speaker 1: the set. We also want to thank Chris and Tom

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Speaker 1: at MySpace.

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Speaker 8: We're putting on this whole operation my Space.

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Speaker 5: Your time.

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Speaker 2: And for being the lifeline, the connection to all of

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Speaker 2: you and to your families and loved ones back home

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Speaker 2: through MySpace.

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Speaker 6: We want to thank them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a few other folks. And we did a

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Speaker 2: live show from Camp Heuring, Kuwait, which is probably like

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Speaker 2: ten miles away from the Iraqi border, on a military

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Speaker 2: based live stream. It was incredible and more than anything,

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Speaker 2: you heard the relevancy of this, like oh my god,

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Speaker 2: I use my Space to connect or oh my god,

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Speaker 2: this band, this music I found. So everything you think

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Speaker 2: you know about your consumers all sort of came together

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Speaker 2: at that one moment, which is incredible.

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Speaker 1: It even ended up as a reunion for the band Filter.

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Speaker 2: We wanted to actually fly some of one of the

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Speaker 2: band members from Filter, this band. He had subsequently left

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Speaker 2: the band, became an army sergeant, and so we wanted

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Speaker 2: to fly him like a troop carrier or something out

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Speaker 2: to the venue, but he ended up just coming on

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Speaker 2: normal means of a commercial flight instead.

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Speaker 1: My Space Tom was there by the way, he was

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Speaker 1: signing autographs. Another reason music was popular in MySpace was

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Speaker 1: the file size was just within reason for someone to

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Speaker 1: add access and share through a less than robust by

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Speaker 1: today's standards internet connection.

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Speaker 2: Music was much smaller in size than film and TV, right,

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Speaker 2: So films that you're talking about a heavy file of content,

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Speaker 2: where music is a smaller bit of content, which you know,

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Speaker 2: the Internet needed a minute to catch up, right, And

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Speaker 2: that's the pipes weren't strong enough at the time, but

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Speaker 2: they were coming along quickly.

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Speaker 1: But MySpace was expanding into video content. In two thousand

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Speaker 1: and seven, the company produced a series called Artist on Artist,

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Speaker 1: matching musicians with comedians Zach Alfanakis with Fiona Apple Maynard,

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Speaker 1: James Keenan from Tool with patent Oswalt.

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Speaker 2: Hey Mike An.

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Speaker 7: My brother hey.

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Speaker 1: Man, That's Mike Patton with Danny DeVito. Other video programs

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Speaker 1: MySpace produced included a Jackass inspired kind of stunt series

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Speaker 1: and a show called Roommates. It's hard to find clips

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Speaker 1: of these programs now, incredibly hard. We'll find out why

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Speaker 1: after the break.

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Speaker 9: A big problem back then was bandwidth. Bandwidth in general,

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Speaker 9: but very much band within my space. And when I

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Speaker 9: would bring it up, when I suggest maybe the pages

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Speaker 9: are too thick because people are having problems downloading, they said, no, no,

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Speaker 9: we have no problems downloading. I'm like, because you are

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Speaker 9: in my space building, you know, do it at home.

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Speaker 1: That's Scott Zacharin, who made Roommates, one of the television

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Speaker 1: programs that my Space produced.

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Speaker 9: Before.

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Speaker 1: I forget. If you have some clips that you could

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Speaker 1: share with us, we'll have to go through like the

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Speaker 1: licensing of them.

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Speaker 9: But I have very little. Have you guys seen my reel?

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Speaker 1: No, I haven't, but you have some clips in the

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Speaker 1: reel from Roomates.

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Speaker 9: There is very little in the dist Okay.

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Speaker 1: It's a problem that's come up very often in my

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Speaker 1: research for this podcast, all the experiences happening on MySpace

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Speaker 1: and the activity, the profiles people created, the messages they

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Speaker 1: sent one another, the testimonials posted, or who is in

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Speaker 1: someone's top eight, There's not much left of it, and

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Speaker 1: what little archives are around continue to be a very

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Speaker 1: fragile resource.

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Speaker 7: Social networking website MySpace is apologizing to users after the

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Speaker 7: company revealed it's lost all of the platform's content uploaded

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Speaker 7: before twenty sixteen. A statement published on MySpace blames a

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Speaker 7: server migration project.

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Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, a reported twelve years of music and

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Speaker 1: video uploads had been lost in a server migration process,

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Speaker 1: and tellingly, it happened at least a year earlier than that,

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Speaker 1: but no one had really been on MySpace to even notice.

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Speaker 1: There was a post on the subreddit tech support in

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen someone asked for help downloading old tracks from

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Speaker 1: MySpace and shared their exchanges with MySpace customer support. Longtime

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Speaker 1: blogger Andy Bayo found this thread, and due to the

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Speaker 1: whims of Internet virality, the issue grew to mass attention.

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Speaker 1: The MySpace data loss was reported everywhere, from BBC to

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Speaker 1: CNN at local news.

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Speaker 8: The MySpace data loss is something that I always put

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Speaker 8: in air quotes. I have no faith that this was

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Speaker 8: done accidentally, like there was a cake of data being

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Speaker 8: transported from one room to another and a waiter tripped.

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Speaker 8: That's not how data works. That's not how a place

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Speaker 8: like MySpace would work. What MySpace really stands as is

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Speaker 8: an example of how long you can coast with user

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Speaker 8: data and an early two thousands website and just do

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Speaker 8: the minimal amount of work until it's not worth it.

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Speaker 8: And MySpace was one of the few early social media

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Speaker 8: websites where the users had incredible amounts of access to

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Speaker 8: change the look and actually inject HTML and images so

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Speaker 8: that you could really have a unique experience from page

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Speaker 8: to page. This wasn't a whole set of you know,

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Speaker 8: unified monoculture pages that had your name and who you

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Speaker 8: know and nothing else.

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Speaker 1: That's Jason Scott.

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Speaker 8: My name is Jason Scott. I am the free rate

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Speaker 8: archivist at the Internet Archive.

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Speaker 1: Jason was able to gather almost half a million tracks

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Speaker 1: that were lost.

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Speaker 8: As it turned out, people were doing research on MySpace

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Speaker 8: in the late two thousands, and multiple sets of researchers

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Speaker 8: were downloading what they called social network maps to download

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Speaker 8: everybody who knew everybody else in some sort of confined

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Speaker 8: space so they could analyze it how do human beings

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Speaker 8: deal with computers and sharing their information? And along the

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Speaker 8: way they had downloaded well over four hundred thousand songs

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Speaker 8: from all sorts of artists and creators. And when I

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Speaker 8: made a big noise in my capacity as activist about

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Speaker 8: this loss, I had some researchers come to me and say,

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Speaker 8: you know, we're sitting on a hard drive full of

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Speaker 8: these songs, would you like them? Don't tell them where

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Speaker 8: came from, please, And I said sure, And so hundreds

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Speaker 8: and hundreds of gigabytes of MP three's low quality MP

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Speaker 8: threes came to us, and I didn't want to just

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Speaker 8: dump it up there, so I had a volunteer create

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Speaker 8: a search engine that was specific to the MySpace songs,

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Speaker 8: and I called it the MySpace Dragon Hoard, and the

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Speaker 8: searching agent was called Hobbit.

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Speaker 1: You can explore the MySpace Music Dragon Hoard on the

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Speaker 1: Internet Archive, and.

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Speaker 8: It basically, with a little slowness and a little bit

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Speaker 8: of shankiness, kind of looks like a MySpace audio player

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Speaker 8: and lets you very vaguely search for album or band

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Speaker 8: or song names, and if it's on there, it'll let

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Speaker 8: you play it. And I'll tell you I've had bands

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Speaker 8: come to me and say that was the only place

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Speaker 8: this song was and you have it, and you rescued

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Speaker 8: our song. Thanks for that. Not many, but enough to

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Speaker 8: have made it worth it, beyond even doing it for

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Speaker 8: the sake of it.

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Speaker 1: One of the bands I looked up in the archive

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Speaker 1: is called the Blinking Underdogs, a SKA band. Jason Scott

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Speaker 1: told me about them.

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Speaker 8: The Internet Archive has one of the early albums from

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Speaker 8: the SKA band from the nineteen nineties, and in the

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Speaker 8: notes it says, yeah, our lead singer Oscar is going

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Speaker 8: off to Juilliard, but he'll be back. He says, we're

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Speaker 8: going to do some more music. They never did any

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Speaker 8: music because Oscar was Oscar Isaac and he's gone off

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Speaker 8: the other things. So you know, we have Oscar Isaac's

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Speaker 8: early ska band that was only on the internet because

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Speaker 8: we don't know where these things are going to lie.

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Speaker 8: It's a museum exhibit of a time long past. For others,

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Speaker 8: it's literally their childhood.

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Speaker 2: Well, I always say that MySpace has been the biggest

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Speaker 2: music site in the world that's not a music site,

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Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is people come to

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Speaker 2: MySpace to socialize and they sort of hear music while

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Speaker 2: they're doing that.

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Speaker 1: The MySpace music Dragon Hoarde is an enormous chunk of

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Speaker 1: MySpace history, but it's not everything. MySpace was just too

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Speaker 1: big and in its current state, which we'll get into

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Speaker 1: in later episodes, is the opposite of robust. In December

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Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two, the original reddit user updated their

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Speaker 1: post to say, I still get comments on this post

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Speaker 1: four years later and feel I should give an update

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Speaker 1: for folks that are trying to retrieve lost MP three files.

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Speaker 1: MySpace released a statement a few years ago stating that

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Speaker 1: any old content that you're unable to play or download

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Speaker 1: was corrupted in a data migration and is unrecoverable. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing anyone can do. It sucks and I'm sorry

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Speaker 1: to all of the people that land on this post

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Speaker 1: looking for answers and how to retrieve lost files. Music

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Speaker 1: from local bands, pictures of friends in the moment, deep

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Speaker 1: in the oughts. When social networks were new, it might

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Speaker 1: not have seemed crucial to have a backup of these files.

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Speaker 1: But now that's a past, a precious history, places you

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Speaker 1: can't get back to people who might not be around anymore.

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Speaker 1: But our digital footprint isn't only a receipt of memories.

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Speaker 1: This is data that can be evidence of tragedy, painful

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Speaker 1: life events, even crimes. More on this in the next

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Speaker 1: episode of Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: listening to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace and iHeart

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Speaker 1: original podcast Main Accounts. The Story of MySpace is written

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Speaker 1: and hosted by me Joanne McNeil, editing its sound design

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Speaker 1: by Mike Coscarelli and Mary Do. Original music by Elise McCoy,

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Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Research and fact checking

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Speaker 1: by Austin Thompson, Jocelyn Sears, and Marissa Brown. Show logo

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Speaker 1: by Lucy Kentania. Special thanks to Ryan Murdoch Grace Views

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Speaker 1: at the Head Frasier. Our associate producer is Lauren Phillip,

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Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Mike Coscarelli, and our executive producer

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Speaker 1: is Jason English. If you're enjoying the show, leave us

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Speaker 1: a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform Sadly,

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Speaker 1: my MySpace page is no longer around, but you can

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Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Joe mick. Let us hear

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Speaker 1: your MySpace story a check out my book Lurking main accounts.

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Speaker 1: The Story of MySpace is a production of iHeart Podcasts.