Lost media

The term primarily encompasses visual, audio, or audiovisual media such as films, television and radio broadcasts, music,[2] and video games.

Some media considered lost may exist in studio or public archives, but may not be available due to copyright or donor restriction rules.

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 since the late 2010s for subways to the mind (mmsoti) and 2021 for Ulterior motives (everyone knows that) (EKT)[11][12][13] Video games, including digital downloads, often fade from existence when digital game stores close, as demonstrated by the Wii Shop Channel, V Cast Network and the Nintendo eShop on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.

[22] 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.

[23] 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.

[24] Media released on the internet, such as livestreams and blog posts, are especially vulnerable to being lost due to a number of issues, such as a website being shut down, it being deleted by the creator without being saved, or never having been archived in the first place.