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Lost media are any media that are believed to no longer exist in any format, or for which no copies can be located. The term primarily encompasses visual, audio, or audiovisual media such as films, television and radio broadcasts, music,^[2] and video games.^[3]^[4]

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 due to copyright or donor restriction rules.^[5] Due to the unstable nature of any format, films, tapes, phonograph records, optical discs like CDs and DVDs, and digital data stored on hard 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 archives.

Lost films

A large portion of silent films made in the United States are now considered lost.^[6] A 2013 report made by the United States Library of Congress estimates that 70 percent of silent films made in the United States have been completely lost.^[7]

Lost television broadcasts

Lost television broadcasts are mostly those early television programs which cannot be accounted for in studio archives (or in personal archives); this is usually because of deliberate destruction or neglect.^[8]^[9]

Lost music

The Library of Congress estimates that a large portion of the earliest musical recordings, from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, have been lost. For example, only two percent of the over 3000 wax cylinders produced by the North American Phonograph Company between 1889 and 1894 are part of the National Recording Preservation Board's sound recording library as of 2024^[update].^[10]

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", have been the subjects of online crowdsourced research since the late 2010s.^[11]^[12]^[13]

Lost video games

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. The infamous P.T., a teaser to the unreleased Silent Hills game, became unable to be redownloaded after its removal from the PlayStation Network within a year.^[14] The Wii U and Nintendo 3DS digital download games Dodge Club Party and Dodge Club Pocket were removed from Nintendo eShop in 2019 and 2022 and became publicly unavailable due to reasons beyond Nintendo's control.^[15]

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.^[16] Some video game enthusiasts argue that out of respect for both the original designers and the fans of the game, the video game publishers have a duty to make sure that the game remains accessible.^[17] Some go on to claim 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, both organizations such as the Video Game History Foundation and hobbyists such as YouTuber The Completionist,^[18] seek to preserve video game history that would have otherwise been lost to time, because of a variety of factors, such as degrading storage mediums, 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,^[19] can be educational material for the future (like learning to code by imitating a classic game from scratch, learning about past peoples' lives^[19]), or that they simply hold emotional value through nostalgia.

Lost electronic data

Data stored in electronic computers risks being lost if it is not frequently migrated into more recent file formats. This happens because as new computer systems are developed and new technologies are built, now obsolete systems may break down over time, leaving the data inside inaccessible.^[20] Electronic data preservation is further complicated by the fact that unless an emulator for a given computer system which can decode the data is present at the time of the preservation, the original data may become inaccessible as the original hardware breaks down, as it may depend on the original hardware to be decoded,^[21] although in some cases the original data may be recoverable through lengthy reverse engineering work with the objective of understanding the original computer system enough to decode the most original electronic data possible.^[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]

Lost internet media

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. Media released solely to streaming services in lieu of hard physical release are also vulnerable to being rendered legally inaccessible by the service's parent company, making it so consumers have no legal way to purchase or stream the media, rendering it lost media by legal means. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes this phenomenon 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".^[25]^[26]^[27]