Music on the internet that has fallen into oblivion?

I noticed that despite the internet being widely used for pirating media, we are really no better off in preservation of certain things than we were prior to the printed press. For example, it is nearly impossible to locate some obscure albums even on torrents, moreso in good quality.

The problem with pre-printing literature is that the interest in the work and its popularity determined whether there was enough demand to go through the effort of copying it. And even then there were often parts that were added or deleted from the original text as it circulated.

The internet has the same problem, so even if you went through the effort of buying a $100 dollar indie album, ripping it in FLAC, then selling it and torrenting it for a while, but somewhere along the line you lose it and the torrent disappears, you're screwed. There are some DOS games I used to play on AOL years ago that almost disappeared from the internet entirely because of no circulation, until someone came along and posted them. It's nearly impossible to know who to consult on the vast sea of the internet who may have it buried on a hard drive, or more frighteningly so, a ten year old scratched CD-R that may be failing.

So I'm wondering, did you guys ever notice any music on the internet that has disappeared entirely? A lot of those crappy MySpace bands were probably lost forever as the music was stored on unreliable formats or media, which is for the better, but it makes me wonder how one would ever locate the hidden gems again after their only source vanishes from the net without a trace, and only a few really recognized its value.

http://i.skyrock.net/6041/64926041/pics/2608153322_1.jpg

You snooze, you lose

Yeah, it's amazing as big as the internet is, some stuff is simply not available for download, either through torrents or file sharing services for several reasons.Probably the biggest is more people don't scratch past the surface when it comes to music.Lots of stuff available on You-Tube,Spotify, Itunes etc. to stream. Streaming is getting more popular then downloading especially for people who mostly use mobile devices.
Another factor is the government shutdown of Megaupload and other file-sharing services pretty much ruined the music blog, which was a shame.The harassment of torrent sites such as Pirate Bay and Kickass torrents has somewhat reduced their popularity.
Try vibrations of doom, who have a TON of metal rarities available for streaming.Heavy Metal Rarites had a nice community and tons of stuff available for download after registration.

Not music exactly, but some music videos are next to impossible to find. Several years ago Lauryn Hill charged people 15 dollars to watch a music video for one of her songs on her website, nowadays while the song itself can be found, the video seems to have completely vanished.

I hope that Wu Tang Clan album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" gets leaked onto the internet one of these days.

With the internet, nothing disappears entirely. Only momentarily. Wait awhile & search again, It'll be back. Torrents, blogs, irc, p2p, forums, usenet, clouds, netlockers, darknet, etc. It's still out there offered by someone.