MySpace lost 50m songs. People have heard me say it before, but if you haven’t met me or you’re new to this blog, let me spell it out for you: if you keep all your data in one place, you are at risk of losing it.

Most people abandoned MySpace many years ago when Facebook came along. You might be surprised to discover that MySpace is still going. In fact, it has outlasted Google+ and became a great way for existing and up-and-coming artists to share music with fans. At least Google+ gave users a chance to download their content. MySpace messed up a server migration and lost songs uploaded between 2003 and 2015. It posted the following statement on its website:

“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.”

Don’t panic though — they’ve apologised, so that’s alright. In 2013, cloud provider 2e2 went bust and the administrator demanded more money from the customers, even those who had paid upfront. The administrators probably apologised too so that’s ok. At least the customers got their data back.

If your provider loses your data where does that leave you? Well, if you don’t pay them, you’ve probably got no recourse. But you should be ok if you pay them, shouldn’t you? Do you use AWS? If so, they’ll probably apologise if they lose your data. And then point you to their terms. You did read the disclaimer in their customer agreement, didn’t you? No? You can’t miss it — it’s in ALL CAPS that US lawyers love.

WE WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY COMPENSATION, REIMBURSEMENT, OR DAMAGES ARISING IN CONNECTION WITH ANY UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO, ALTERATION OF, OR THE DELETION, DESTRUCTION, DAMAGE, LOSS OR FAILURE TO STORE ANY OF YOUR CONTENT OR OTHER DATA. 

Do you use Sungard? If reports are to be believed, they are about to file for bankruptcy in the USA but they should be able to survive. That action might be a trigger allowing you to terminate your relationship with them so you should check your contract with them.

Look, if your cloud strategy is to put all your data in one cloud with one vendor and hope you don’t need them to apologise to you, I recommend you adopt a better cloud strategy.