Students on campus the weekend of Jan. 20 might have noticed something unusual about the music playing on the sound systems: it was the same two songs looping over and over again. 

On January 20, a computer malfunction during a sports broadcast caused WPPJ’s system to crash, wiping out nearly its entire catalog of songs, except for two. 

Ethan Rowinski, broadcast production major and programming director at WPPJ, said an hour was spent trying to fix the system before Assistant General Manager and Music Director Savannah Ikach finally had to call campus IT support. 

 “They eventually called IT to the studio, and it was figured out that a faulty power strip had died…Once the computer turned back on though, all of the songs, all nearly 1300 of them, were gone from the system,” Rowinski wrote in an email to The Globe. 

Rowinski believes the songs were wiped when the computer shut down, as they were never actually downloaded onto the device in the first place.

“Our former music director loaded all of these songs onto the system we use, RadioBoss, via an external hard drive. He graduated spring ’23, and therefore took that hard drive with him. So ever since he graduated, it’s assumed that the computer has just, never turned off since then, and all the songs were just temporarily on there,” Rowinski wrote. 

Rowinski went on to explain that he believes, once the computer turned back on, the RadioBoss application attempted to start cycling through the catalog again but only had access to two songs, which Rowinski had personally downloaded onto the computer. 

The songs in question were from two local Pittsburgh bands: “My Friend” by 9fiftyseven, and “Garden of Eden” by Funky Lamp.

After the issue occurred, a post was uploaded to WPPJ’s Instagram account alerting station DJs that all shows were to be suspended until further notice. 

By the beginning of the week, the WPPJ team was able to restore some of the former catalog, but not before students took notice of the issue. 

“I was in the Harry Potter room and the dining hall, and I heard the same song on loop, literally for the whole day…it was just lowkey annoying,” said freshman acting major Mia Marsala. 

Other students similarly recalled hearing the looping music mostly in the second floor lounge or “Harry Potter Room,” and the dining hall, such as dance majors Karsyn Cunningham and Riley Amey. 

“It would start, and then it would stop, and then there would be a long pause, with no music, and then the same song would start up again,” said Cunningham. 

As of this writing, Ikach has reuploaded approximately 400 of the over 1,000 missing songs, and is continuing to recover the rest. 

Rowinski said WPPJ is looking to install an external harddrive in the studio so that the issue does not occur again. 

Dean Paylo, Vice President of Student Affairs, was reached out to for comment, but was unaware the issue had occurred.