Playlist #1: Myspace Songs, Impermanence of the Internet, and Interview with Charlie Vela

Charlie Vela behind the boards

After last month’s announcement of Myspace mp3’s lost permanently, we talk with recording engineer Charlie Vela about how he stores massive amounts of recordings he’s done for RGV musicians for the past 13 years, and create a playlist of RGV songs saved from the MySpace days.

An estimated 50 million songs from 14 million artists have been lost. “Due to a server migration files were corrupted and unable to be transferred to our updated site. There is no way to recover the lost data,” said a Myspace date privacy officer. PureVolume, a fellow music-hosting website, has also shut down its music player.

Charlie Vela has a system for storing studio session files in multiple places. He stores 3 copies of every session: one at the studio and two at home. He also uploads to a Backblaze cloud storage. The costs add up, but the system has worked for him. For one request, he dug up files for a client from a session as far back as 2007. “I have everything from 2006 and on. This is my work. This is the bare minimum level that someone in my field should have. We’re one lightning storm away from losing it all,” says Vela.  “If someone wants an old song from a relative after they died, I want to be able to say, ‘here you go.’ I want people to trust that I’ll save their work.”

The loss of music uploaded long ago, reminds us of the impermanence of the internet. SoundCloud has been a major site for independent artists but has been in danger before. “People think that if they upload something to the internet, that it’s safe forever. These too big to fail sites do lose data or shut down. Hard drive failures do happen too, especially when they haven’t been used in years,” says Vela. Even the upgraded software can be a problem for digging up old files. “Some instruments and effects won’t exist anymore, but you want to improve it anyway and throw out some of the plugins”

Vela shared the news on Facebook and read the reactions of others. Some were deeply affected while others were indifferent. “Some were saying that Myspace sucks so who cares? While others were saying something like, ‘A family member died and that was the only place I could hear his music.’ Some were saying that it was the only way to hear their old band’s songs.”

Vela has been the de facto local music historian since the debut of his documentary “As I Walk Through the Valley.” He is currently a music producer and sound engineer at Casa Panchita Studios.

Listen to a Spotify play list of saved RGV Myspace songs here