Product Code Database
Lost media is any type of media thought to no longer exist in any format, or for which no Copying can be located, partial or otherwise. The term primarily encompasses visual, audio, or audiovisual media, such as lost film, television, radio broadcasts, Lostwave, and Video game.
Many television and radio broadcast masters, recorded onto magnetic tape, may be lost due to the industry practice of wiping. Motion picture studios also often destroyed their original nitrate film elements, as film and broadcast material was often considered ephemeral and of little historical worth after they had made their revenue. Some media considered lost may exist in studio or public archives, but may not be available to most people due to copyright or donor restriction rules, or for the most part, complete disinterest by anyone in an outdated program or subject matter. Due to the unstable nature of any format, films, tapes, phonograph records, like Compact disc, Blu-ray, and , and digital data stored on devices such as USB flash drives, , solid-state drives, and hard disk drives, all naturally degrade over time, especially if not kept in correct storage conditions.
Preservation efforts attempt to avoid the loss of works; this is usually done by storing them in .
A concept related to lost music is "lostwave", a term coined on the Internet for extant recordings of music for which little to no information about its authors or origin exists. Some examples of lostwave, such as "Subways of Your Mind" and "Ulterior Motives", both of which were eventually identified in 2024, have been the subjects of online crowdsourced research.
According to the Video Game History Foundation, 87% of American video games released before 2010 are out of print and cannot be acquired outside of the grey market or piracy. Many of these titles are in danger of becoming lost, or already are. Some video game enthusiasts argue that out of respect for both the original designers and the fans of the game, video game publishers have a duty to make sure that the game remains accessible. Some enthusiasts believe that when the publishers don't, the consumers are justified in pirating the game, as they are left with no other alternative in the absence of proper methods of purchase which would benefit the publishers or creators of the game. In other words, they claim that piracy is okay in that context because it doesn't harm the publishers/creators of the game, i.e. if the publisher wants to benefit from the sale of the game, then they need to ensure it remains available for sale.
Video game preservationists, including both organizations such as the Video Game History Foundation and hobbyists seek to preserve video game history that would have otherwise been lost to time due to a variety of factors, such as Data degradation, digital game stores closing, or the game becoming unavailable because of licensing or financial issues. Their motivations are that the games hold cultural and historical value, can be educational material for the future (such as learning to code by imitating a classic game from scratch or learning about past peoples' lives), or that they simply hold emotional value through nostalgia.
To mitigate the loss of their data, the Arctic World Archive has been the chosen location for the preservation of the code on public repositories on GitHub. The Arctic World Archive also stores a wide range of data of interest to multiple companies, institutions and governments; including the Constitutions of Brazil and Norway.
/ref> Media released solely to streaming services without a physical release is sometimes withdrawn from further distribution, leaving no means to obtain the media outside of Online piracy. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes it as "a whole new kind of lost media that's only going to be preserved by those individuals who did the work to make and save copies of it, often risking draconian legal liability, regardless of how the studio feels about that work".
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