What happened to the personal MP3 page
For a stretch of years, a personal home page with a list of music files on it was an ordinary thing to have. The files sat in a folder, the page listed them by artist and title, and anyone who found the address could click one. Those pages are now the largest single category of dead links on the old web, and it is worth being clear about both why they existed and why nearly none of them work.
What those pages actually were
They were folder listings with a little formatting. Internet accounts came with a small amount of web space, and the simplest use for it was to put files in it and link them. There was no player, no streaming and no catalog — a click downloaded the file.
Because the page was hand-written, the titles were often wrong or abbreviated, and the same recording could appear under three different names across three pages. That is why searching for an old filename today tends to turn up forum posts rather than the file.
Why the links died
Three reasons, in order of how many pages each took down. The hosting disappeared: subscriber web space closed along with the dial-up and early broadband accounts that provided it, and free hosts shut down in waves. Rights holders sent notices, and hosts removed files and sometimes whole accounts. And people simply stopped paying for the space.
The pages themselves often survive in web archives, which is a useful distinction: the list of what someone had can be readable while every file on it is gone. Archives generally preserve the page, not the media it linked to.
Where recordings can be found legally now
More than most people expect. Large public archives host enormous collections of recordings that rights holders or performers released for open circulation, including live concert collections taped with the artists' permission. Public libraries license streaming services that include deep catalogs, and a library card is the only requirement.
For current music, buying directly from artists' own stores gets a downloadable file rather than a license that can be revoked. And for recordings old enough to be out of copyright, national libraries and university collections publish digitized transfers with the provenance documented.
How to keep a collection that lasts
The lesson of the dead MP3 page applies to any file collection. Keep the originals on storage you control, in a format that many programs can read, and keep two copies in different places. Write the metadata into the files rather than relying on a folder structure, because folder structures do not survive being copied by someone else.
And keep a plain list — a text file of what is in the collection. The archived pages of the early web are readable today for exactly that reason: a plain list of what someone had outlives every player, plug-in and service built to play it.