Electronic music fans have been given a harsh lesson in media preservation after Nest HQ, the defunct media platform owned by Skrillex's OWSLA label, removed all of its original music from SoundCloud.
While Internet Archive fights the existential legal challenges and the repositories of our favorite websites remain at risk, conservationists around the world have been alerting the public that no entirely online media is safe and that backups are essential.
This particularly affects fans of the deeply influential Nest HQ brand, whose official SoundCloud account has been removed from original music. When clicking on old links that were once active or on articles with clues uploaded, the message appears: “This clue was not found. It may have been deleted.”
At the time of writing it is unclear whether the deletions are permanent or not. Its ambiguous nature has also baffled longtime fans, who wondered if Nest HQ removed the music intentionally or if their SoundCloud subscription simply expired.
While tragic, it is not surprising news. Months ago, Nest HQ's YouTube channel was not only removed from its uploads, but it was also removed entirely. This news largely went unnoticed, as many fans also noticed the removal from YouTube this week, despite a post in July. mail on the r/Skrillex subreddit which has since been removed by its moderators.
Additionally, the editorial staff of the official Nest HQ blog was fired a few years ago without notice. The website containing all of their hard work was then taken offline, leaving no record of their work (except for indiscriminate stories cached on the Internet Archive) with no recourse to recover the content.
Skrillex has not addressed the uploads removed from Nest HQ.
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