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The Technology Behind Last.fm

CNET's Crave has up a detailed interview with Last.fm's Matthew Ogle, the company's head of Web development. Reader CNETNate notes that Last.fm has streamed 275,000 years of audio around the world. From the interview: "We stream all music directly off our servers in London. We have a cluster of streaming nodes including a bunch of powerful machines with solid-state hard drives. We have a process that runs daily which finds the hottest music and pushes those tracks on to the SSDs streamers that sit in front of our regular platter-based streaming machines. That way, if someone is listening to one of our more popular stations, the chances are really good that these songs are coming off our high-speed SSD machines. They're fast because every song is sitting in memory instead of being on a slow, spinning platter." The interview is actually on two pages but pretends it's on three.

9 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. 275,000 years? Wow. by zonker · · Score: 1, Funny

    Last.fm has streamed 275,000 years of audio around the world.

    I'd love to know how much of that was stuff like Britney Spears.

  2. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by inamorty · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'd say at least an Ice-age worth.

  3. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd love to know how much of that was stuff like Britney Spears.

    Last.fm is definitely a way to feel awkward with friends. Some of my acquaintances are well-read, well-dressed, well-spoken people, the sort who really seem to have it all together, but then you can never really manage the same level of respect for them after you've seen their Last.fm profile is nothing but Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga.

  4. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    English, you insensitive clod.

  5. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by ScoLgo · · Score: 3, Funny

    "I'd love to know how much of that was stuff like Britney Spears."

    Unfortunately, you'd probably have to measure that metric in Libraries of Congress.

    --
    "Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."
  6. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by Dekker3D · · Score: 2, Funny

    UKanian? ;)

  7. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Hardly. 'English', 'Scottish', and even 'Irish' people are all really Welsh; they're just too embarrassed to admit it. Something about the silly place names...

  8. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    What do you call someone from the UK? .

    a subject

  9. Re:275,000 years? Wow. by MrMr · · Score: 2, Funny

    choice of software...
    You're new here?