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Managing Last.FM's "Mountain of Data"
Rob Spengler writes "Last.FM co-founder Richard Jones says the biggest asset the company owns is 'hundreds of terabytes of user data.' Jones adds, '... playing with that data is one of the most fun things about working at the company.' Last.FM, for those who have been living on Mars for the last two years, is the largest online radio outlet, with millions of listeners per day. The company surpassed Pandora and others largely due to its unique datamining features: 'Audioscrobbler,' the company's song/artist naming algorithm, can correctly determine a track even with tens of thousands of false entries. Jones says sitting on that much data has even helped police: 'thieves listening to music on an Audioscrobbler-powered media player have helped police in the US, UK, and other countries track down users' stolen laptops.' Does sitting on a mountain of data make Last.FM powerful enough to start making a stand against the record industry? CBS certainly thinks so — they bought the company for £140 (~$200) million last year."
what i find most interesting is the order certain songs "go together", like listening to a song from Slayer, followed by, say, "someday i suppose" from the bosstones. when composing songlists, i appreciate how similar songs and moods can flow, but also how the contrast of dissimilar songs can SOMETIMES compliment each other.
a large database could ferret out such instances that might occur frequently in multiple playlists.
The summary wasn't insulting enough, so I think I'll just add a bit extra.
Last.FM is so popular that if you aren't familiar with the service, you must be a drooling, knuckle dragging luddite.
Apparently I'm not one of the cool kids. I'm sad now, and my feelings are hurt.
I think we have enough teacher-student sex scandals without a matchmaking web site!
Information wants to be free.
Information wants to be a ballerina.
Best Slashdot comment ever
CBS certainly thinks so -- they bought the company for £140 (~$200) million last year.
Which is why whatever comes of them, at best it will be evolutionary. CBS is part of the old guard RIAA corps, they are just one of the faces of Viacom - all controlled by Summer Redstone. They may have brought some money to the table, but they brought a whole ton of baggage with them too. Enough baggage to make this privacy freak decide they couldn't be trusted with all that data they've been collecting (for example, if they can track down a stolen laptop, they can track down someone playing an MP3 from an illegally leaked pre-release album).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The company surpassed Pandora and others largely due to its unique datamining features
I would think that being available outside of the USA may have helped quite a bit as well.
Information wants to be free.
Information wants to be a ballerina.
Then information needs to get her fat ass on a diet or she's never going to fit into that tutu and make Mommy proud!
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
with last.fm is how it feeds my OCD issues regarding song playcounts. I nearly lost it when the stupid scrobbler started randomly recording excess playcounts on one album. It screwed with my numbers. Then it stopped counting that album's plays all together.
Seriously though, I have found using the site to be pretty enjoyable. And the advertisements are actually worth keeping AdBlock turned off for. I found a few new artists, some unsigned, that way. I like all the various widgets and things that can crunch my data. Songbird has a last.fm plugin/addon that makes for very easy integration. It's just really useful. I've also found concerts on the site.
I rarely use the social side of it, except with friends I already know. But that's me.
http://transformativeworks.org/
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