Last.fm Quality Control

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Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries.^[1] On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Using a music recommendation system called “Audioscrobbler,” Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (”scrobbled”) via a plugin installed into the user’s music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user’s profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm’s music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

So what processes and systems are in place to reduce the likelihood of software errors?

They use lots of visual management for a start:

we selectively take the most vital data (things like database load, web request times, uptime status of core machines) and display these on eye-catching displays in our operations room.

Checks on the code it is released is highlighted using these:

These 3 bears sit in a prominent position and watch our developer’s every move. When things are good we have a green bear gently glowing and purring, when changes are being processed a yellow bear joins the party, and if the build gets broken the growling evil red bear makes an appearance. The developer who broke things usually goes a similar shade of red while frantically trying to fix whatever was broken while the others chortle in the background.

And this measures average website response time:

JURASSIC 5 – QUALITY CONTROL

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