History MissingEpisode / Music

** To a lesser extent, his 1981 ''Another One Rides the Bus'' EP is ''looooong'' out of print (though all songs but the title track were re-recorded for his 1983 SelfTitledAlbum), as is his 1994 box set ''Permanent Record: Al in the Box'' due to the artwork masters being lost forever ([[{{Irony}} ironic]] given the title). The song "Headline News", released a standalone single in 1994, did not appeared on any other official release until the ''Squeeze Box'' set in 2017.

* Music/BoardsOfCanada claim to have released 5 albums/[=EPs=] before the "Twoism" EP in 1995 that first go them noticed. They were allegedly called (in chronological order) ''Catalog 3'', ''Acid Memories'', ''Closes Vol. 1'', ''Play by Numbers'' and ''Hooper Bay'', and the cover art for these release has been released. Short snippets of ''Acid Memories'' as well as the latter two were released on the band's website, but it's unknown wherever these are genuine or wherever these albums did even exist or not.

* 10,000 Maniacs' 1987 album ''In My Tribe'' originally included a CoverVersion of "Peace Train" by Music/CatStevens. In 1989, the song's original performer [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens%27_comments_about_Salman_Rushdie made some controversial public remarks regarding Ayatollah Khomeini's death fatwa against Salman Rushdie]], and the song was subsequently removed from the US CD version of the album. However, their version of the song remained on international CD copies of the album, as well as on vinyl, and it was re-released in the US in 2004, as part of a 2-CD [[GreatestHitsAlbum greatest hits / rarities compilation]] called ''Campfire Songs''.

* Mike Doughty recorded his solo debut, ''Skittish'', in 1996, shortly before the release of Music/SoulCoughing's ''Irresistible Bliss'' - the label rejected it for sounding too different from Soul Coughing. The album's first "release" was in the form of homemade copies that Doughty started selling as merch during a 2000 solo tour; Much of his set at the time consisted of songs from the ''Skittish'' sessions, and he had found that material had become popular after circulating on file-sharing services. ''Skittish'' finally saw a more proper release in 2004, as a two-disc set that also featured outtakes, live songs, and the later EP ''Rockity Roll''.

* One of the most notorious missing songs was a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_%27n%27_Steady track]] called "Ready 'n' Steady" by a group only known as "D.A." The song charted on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" chart (the songs that just missed the Hot 100 Charts, essentially #101 and so on.) for three weeks in 1979. Initially believing it was a small run of an independent label that managed to get some airplay in Midwestern markets, music historian Joel Whitburn - considered to be the foremost expert on the Billboard charts - searched out the address of the track's record label to an empty building in Detroit, and found no evidence of the song, the group, or the alleged record label. Information about this song was '''so''' impossible to find that until 2016, it was generally accepted that the record actually didn't exist and was merely some sort of practical joke. One resourceful investigator realized that no one had ever bothered to check copyright records for the song. Once he did, he found a reference to a song called "Ready & Steady" from 1979 written by '''D'''ennis '''A'''rmand Lucchesi and Jim Franks. He passed the info on to Whitburn's assistant Paul Haney, who tracked down Franks and learned the whole story: the UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco based band was actually called D.A. & The Dukes, the song was never officially released as a single and its placement on the charts was due to the band's publicist pulling strings at Billboard (Billboard's chart director at the time, Bill Wardlow, was notorious for manipulating the rankings and accepting bribes). Lucchesi himself died in 2005, apparently unaware that he was at the center of a notorious music mystery. Franks also passed on the audio for "Ready 'n' Steady" to Haney, then Haney and Franks appeared as guests on ''Crap From the Past'', a Minneapolis radio show dedicated to pop music obscurities, which gave "Ready 'n' Steady" its "world premiere" after 37 years, revealing it to be a fairly decent bit of bar band HardRock ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdt_Aer-46Q here is a link to the song]]).

* One of the most notorious missing songs is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_%27n%27_Steady track]] called "Ready 'n' Steady" by a group only known as "D.A." The song charted on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" chart (the songs that just missed the Hot 100 Charts, essentially #101 and so on.) for three weeks in 1979. Initially believing it was a small run of an independent label that managed to get some airplay in Midwestern markets, music historian Joel Whitburn - considered to be the foremost expert on the Billboard charts - searched out the address of the track's record label to an empty building in Detroit, and found no evidence of the song, the group, or the alleged record label. Information about this song was '''so''' impossible to find that until 2016, it was generally accepted that the record actually didn't exist and was merely some sort of practical joke. One resourceful investigator realized that no one had ever bothered to check copyright records for the song. Once he did, he found a reference to a song called "Ready & Steady" from 1979 written by '''D'''ennis '''A'''rmand Lucchesi and Jim Franks. He passed the info on to Whitburn's assistant Paul Haney, who tracked down Franks and learned the whole story: the UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco based band was actually called D.A. & The Dukes, the song was never officially released as a single and its placement on the charts was due to the band's publicist pulling strings at Billboard (Billboard's chart director at the time, Bill Wardlow, was notorious for manipulating the rankings and accepting bribes). Lucchesi himself died in 2005, apparently unaware that he was at the center of a notorious music mystery. Franks also passed on the audio for "Ready 'n' Steady" to Haney, then Haney and Franks appeared as guests on ''Crap From the Past'', a Minneapolis radio show dedicated to pop music obscurities, which gave "Ready 'n' Steady" its "world premiere" after 37 years, revealing it to be a fairly decent bit of bar band HardRock ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdt_Aer-46Q here is a link to the song]]).

* One of the most notorious missing songs is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_%27n%27_Steady track]] called "Ready 'n' Steady" by a group only known as "D.A." The song charted on Billboard's "Bubbling Under" chart (the songs that just missed the Hot 100 Charts, essentially #101 and so on.) for three weeks in 1979. Initially believing it was a small run of an independent label that managed to get some airplay in Midwestern markets, music historian Joel Whitburn - considered to be the foremost expert on the Billboard charts - searched out the address of the track's record label to an empty building in Detroit, and found no evidence of the song, the group, or the alleged record label. Information about this song was '''so''' impossible to find that until 2016, it was generally accepted that the record actually didn't exist and was merely some sort of practical joke. Eventually, one of the surviving members of the group gave the recording to a radio show dedicated to old music or other old stuff. The song was never actually released as a single and its placement on the charts was due to the band's publicist pulling strings at Billboard (Billboard's chart director at the time, Bill Wardlow, was notorious for manipulating the rankings and accepting bribes). [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdt_Aer-46Q Here is a link to the song]]

* Music/NeilYoung has done this several times throughout his career, most notably with the 1975 album ''Homegrown'' which was withdrawn at the last moment and replaced with ''Tonight's The Night'', recorded 2 years earlier. It's never been released, though some tracks have shown up on other albums.

* Music/ButtholeSurfers' 1998 album ''After the Astronaut'' had promo copies sent out, but the official release was pulled, reportedly due to record label disputes, and the Butthole Surfers were dropped from their label. About half of the album's songs would get reworked for their next album, ''The Weird Revolution'', which was released on a new label in 2001. Also, bizarrely, the back cover of ''After The Astronaut'' ended up [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcy_Playground#Shapeshifter_.281999.E2.80.932000.29 becoming the front cover]] of Music/MarcyPlayground's ''Shapeshifter'': At the time, Marcy Playground were on Creator/CapitolRecords, the same label Butthole Surfers were dropped from; Capitol retained the rights to the the ''After The Astronaut'' artwork, and offered it to Marcy Playground without revealing it was originally meant for another album.

* One half-MissingEpisode/LiveActionTV and one half-MissingEpisode/{{Music}}: Back in 1979, Creator/{{NBC}} attempted to reinvigorate themselves through the their "Proud as a Peacock" initiative. However, as NBC was in last place due to the ineptitude of Fred Silverman, many people were cheesed off with the network. As such, the people who created and sang the "Proud as a Peacock" jingle created a parody known as "We're LOUD". The song was distributed to various employees and affiliates as jokes to listen to. Then, Creator/DonImus made the mistake of ''airing it over the air.'' This pissed off Silverman enough to go on a hunting spree to find and retrieve those copies. Some ''do'' still exist, but not in a state that they could be played crisply.

* Possibly due to licensing issues, {{Music/Melvins}}' ''The Crybaby'' is missing its opening track, a CoverVersion of [[{{Music/Nirvana}} "Smells Like Teen Spirit"]], on Spotify or other major streaming services - however, the song is still included on all physical copies, as well as being available for download on the band's official Bandcamp site.
** ''The Trilogy'', a vinyl BoxSet of the albums ''The Maggot'', ''The Bootlicker'', and ''The Crybaby'', is missing some material from the original CD releases due to its 3 LP format: ''The Maggot'' and ''The Bootlicker'' are simply stripped of their {{hidden track}}s, but Side B of ''The Crybaby'' is missing two minutes of "Divorced" and the last 4 songs are cut entirely. Something similar happened with the vinyl release of ''Hold It In'', but only two songs had to be left off ("Eyes On You" and "House Of Gasoline"), and it was remedied somewhat by making those two missing songs {{B Side}}s of the separately issued 10" single "Bride Of Crankenstein".

* Music/GodspeedYouBlackEmperor's first album, ''All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling'' was limited to a release of 33 cassette tapes. To this date, none of the songs have leaked to the Internet and all that's known are the album title, song titles, and the album art.

* One of the most notorious lost albums in indie rock is ''Dear Tommy'' by Chromatics. The band had originally announced ''Dear Tommy'' in 2014 with a release date of February 2015, which came and went without sight of the album. Later planned release dates also passed by, and 11 songs that were intended at one point for the tracklist were released as standalone singles between 2014 and 2020. In 2017, band leader Johnny Jewel announced that he had destroyed every physical copy of the album - 15,000 [=CDs=] and 10,000 [=LPs=] - following a near-death experience and had re-recorded the entire thing. A few months later the band performed "Shadow", a single intended for the album, on an episode of ''Series/TwinPeaks'', earning them some of the highest profile media attention of their career and it was speculated that the album would soon follow, but it did not. Instead, the band released a completely different new album called ''Closer to Grey'' in 2019 with promises that ''Dear Tommy'' was still on its way and more new songs were released from it in the ensuing months. Speculation over the album ended for good when Chromatics broke up in August 2021 when all the members other than Jewel quit, and one of those former members speculated that ''Dear Tommy'' would never be released. Later that year, Pitchfork [[https://pitchfork.com/news/did-chromatics-album-dear-tommy-ever-exist-in-the-first-place/ speculated]] that ''Dear Tommy'' was never finished or sequenced apart from the singles released from it over the years, and some parties close to the band dispute that the physical copies that Jewel proported to have destroyed ever existed.

* One of the most notorious lost albums in indie rock is ''Dear Tommy'' by Chromatics. The band had originally announced ''Dear Tommy'' in 2014 with a release date of February 2015, which came and went without sight of the album. Later planned release dates also passed by, and 11 songs that were intended at one point for the tracklist were released as standalone singles between 2014 and 2020. In 2017, band leader Johnny Jewel announced that he had destroyed every physical copy of the album - 15,000 [=CDs=] and 10,000 [=LPs=] - following a near-death experience and had re-recorded the entire thing. A few months later the band performed "Shadow", a single intended for the album on an episode of ''Series/TwinPeaks'', earning them some of the highest profile media attention of their career and it was speculated that the album would soon follow, but it did not. Instead, the band released a completely different new album called ''Closer to Grey'' in 2019 with promises that ''Dear Tommy'' was still on its way and more new songs were released from it in the ensuing months. Speculation over the album ended for good when Chromatics broke up in August 2021 when all the members other than Jewel quit, and one of those former members speculated that ''Dear Tommy'' would never be released. Later that year, Pitchfork [[https://pitchfork.com/news/did-chromatics-album-dear-tommy-ever-exist-in-the-first-place/ speculated]] that ''Dear Tommy'' was never finished or sequenced apart from the singles released from it over the years, and some parties close to the band dispute that the physical copies that Jewel proported to have destroyed ever existed.

One of the most speculated about lost albums in indie rock is ''Dear Tommy'' by Chromatics. The band had originally announced ''Dear Tommy'' in 2014 with a release date of February 2015, which came and went without sight of the album. Later planned release dates also passed by, and 11 songs that were intended at one point for the tracklist were released as standalone singles between 2014 and 2020. In 2017, band leader Johnny Jewel announced that he had destroyed every physical copy of the album - 15,000 [=CDs=] and 10,000 [=LPs=] - following a near-death experience and had re-recorded the entire thing. A few months later the band performed "Shadow", a single intended for the album on an episode of ''Series/TwinPeaks'', earning them some of the highest profile media attention of their career and it was speculated that the album would soon follow, but it did not. Instead, the band released a completely different new album called ''Closer to Grey'' in 2019 with promises that ''Dear Tommy'' was still on its way and more new songs were released from it in the ensuing months. Speculation over the album ended for good when Chromatics broke up in August 2021 when all the members other than Jewel quit, and one of those former members speculated that ''Dear Tommy'' would never be released. Later that year, Pitchfork [[https://pitchfork.com/news/did-chromatics-album-dear-tommy-ever-exist-in-the-first-place/ speculated]] that ''Dear Tommy'' was never finished or sequenced apart from the singles released from it over the years, and some parties close to the band dispute that the physical copies that Jewel proported to have destroyed ever existed.

One of the most speculated about lost albums in indie rock is ''Dear Tommy'' by Chromatics. The band had originally announced ''Dear Tommy'' in 2014 with a release date of February 2015, which came and went without sight of the album. Later planned release dates also passed by, and 11 songs that were intended at one point for the tracklist were released as standalone singles between 2014 and 2020. In 2017, band leader Johnny Jewel announced that he had destroyed every physical copy of the album - 15,000 CDs and 10,000 LPs - following a near-death experience and had re-recorded the entire thing. A few months later the band performed "Shadow", a single intended for the album on an episode of ''Series/TwinPeaks'', earning them some of the highest profile media attention of their career and it was speculated that the album would soon follow, but it did not. Instead, the band released a completely different new album called ''Closer to Grey'' in 2019 with promises that ''Dear Tommy'' was still on its way and more new songs were released from it in the ensuing months. Speculation over the album ended for good when Chromatics broke up in August 2021 when all the members other than Jewel quit, and one of those former members speculated that ''Dear Tommy'' would never be released. Later that year, Pitchfork [[https://pitchfork.com/news/did-chromatics-album-dear-tommy-ever-exist-in-the-first-place/ speculated]] that ''Dear Tommy'' was never finished or sequenced apart from the singles released from it over the years, and some parties close to the band dispute that the physical copies that Jewel proported to have destroyed ever existed.

* ''Music/{{KMFDM}}'''s 1984 debut album ''Opium'' only saw an initial release of [[NoExportForYou 200 cassettes in Germany]], and the master tapes were lost for nearly two decades before being salvaged from a house ravaged by fire and water damage. It finally got a full release in 2002.

* Music/{{Microdisney}}'s songs "Harmony Time" and "Money for the Trams". These were originally B Sides of the single 'Birthday Girl', and soon after appeared on the cassette version of the album ''The Clock Comes Down The Stairs''. In 1995, when the band were going through their master recordings at Rough Trade, this master tape could not be found. As a consequence they are the only Microdisney songs from this period to have not been released on CD. Considering 'Harmony Time' was included on at least three releases (7", 12" and Cassette) it is confusing that this happened, as surely master tapes would exist for all three releases. They are still lost as of 2012, when the band are set to reissue those albums again.

* Ty Herndon's fifth studio album for Creator/EpicRecords was never released when its lead single, "Heather's Wall", stalled out at #37. Epic then released a GreatestHitsAlbum, and Herndon was sidelined for several years due to a full-fledged CreatorBreakdown. Ty said in an interview with Creator/{{CMT}} that the song's corresponding music video was part of a trilogy that would have included videos for "I'd Move Heaven and Earth for You" and "Stones", but neither video was made. "I'd Move Heaven and Earth for You" appeared on the Greatest Hits album, but "Stones" did not surface until Ty released a re-recorded version in 2011 on a small independent label (although a version also appears on Music/TracyLawrence's 2004 album ''Strong'').

* When the label Category 5 Records went out of business in 2006 [[ExecutiveMeddling due to the owner misallocating funds intended for a hospital that he owned]], four singles were canned without ever being released: "Wake Up Dancin'" by Odiss Kohn, "All Kinds of Beautiful" by Shauna Feagan, "The One That Got Away" (irony abounds in the title) by Jerrod Niemann, and "Something Stronger Than Me" by Music/TravisTritt. Both Niemann and Tritt re-released their Category 5 material independently in 2013, but Kohn and Feagan immediately disappeared.

** The legendary rejected third single "Scream Thy Last Scream"/"Vegetable Man", despite being hailed as two of Music/SydBarrett's finest songs, did not see release outside of a bootleg until the ''Early Years 1965-1972'' box set in 2016. The reason speculated is that the band felt it was too connected with Syd's CreatorBreakdown.

** After ''Music/DarkSideOfTheMoon'', they experimented with a recording to be called ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Household Objects]]''. The project was eventually scrapped, and although some bits were eventually incorporated into other songs (two full length recordings were also included in expanded re-issues of The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here), the rest of the project will most likely never see the light of day.