It’s Friday at Last.fm, which means most of the gang are already at The Prince Arthur enjoying their luke-warm pints of Kent’s Best.
As per company tradition, we also snuck a few little features out the door in flagrant violation of the “No Releases On Friday, Jerks!” rule. We wouldn’t want you to have a boring weekend.
Get Your Ritter On
Julian was first out the gate, experimenting with some cool new group page customization options while simultaneously showcasing his slightly disturbing love for chocolate. (Fear not group leaders, this and a whole host of cool new group features will see a full release this summer.)
Top Video Charts
Steve wasn’t to be outdone, however. It’s Friday — make a bowl of popcorn, curl up on the sofa, and enjoy the top music videos on Last.fm.
Lots more goodies coming your way in the next few weeks, as well as a new rack of webservers to help alleviate some of our recent slowness. From all of us in London: turn up the music and have a great weekend!
Comments
Michael Kamleitner
22 June, 21:33
nice ones… but is it just me wondering why the submission-server(s) haven’t been working the whole evening? (both using iScrobbler and my Squeezebox).
anyway, have a fine weekend everbody…
Kirrus
23 June, 00:05
Not just you, using Last.fm on linux, Rhythembox + flash lastfm player ;)
Have a good weekend… hope you enjoyed the pint (or 3)
Matt
23 June, 00:27
Ha, it figures… we’re on the case, thanks for the reports.
Jelle
23 June, 09:02
Nice stuff!
But say, talking about Group features and such. Maybe this is a good place to draw some attention to my dreadfully ignored post on the forums about deleted group charts.
Tecfan
23 June, 10:38
Yea! New servers, new features.. I love updates :)
Lady Banana
23 June, 12:57
Seems it’s all broken now.. nothing working :(
qnaal
23 June, 15:10
ohshitgaiz the internet is broken~ !
big v
23 June, 15:27
Please hurry up with the new servers. Atm the speed is too bad to use the site
ken
23 June, 17:06
This sounds like a job for super Russ – knee deep in mud at Glasto or knee deep in…
Matt
23 June, 18:14
Nothing like spending Saturday at the datacentre, sigh! RJ is there as we speak, we hope to have normal service restored soon.
(Mental note: don’t blog about the weekend, it’s a curse…)
Photoguy69
23 June, 20:49
It’s not just the weekend, look at the shouts all over the place talking about the submission servers being slow or down all week. Not a good way to start off with CBS. A lot of people are getting fed up with the poor service! I ahve enough faith in you guys to subscribe for another three months but if things don’t improve, I’m gone.
Tor
23 June, 22:56
Hi guys, since you’re not responding on the forum’s I’d like to ask here:
What are your intentions as to the Day of Silence ( http://www.savenetradio.org/ )?
Are you going to do something or is TechCrunch right? “Is it perhaps a case of CBS deciding to let the competition die?”
I like Last.fm, and I’d really like to stay a user, so some answers would be nice.
Jens
23 June, 23:12
Keep kool.
Barney Gale
23 June, 23:45
Please please please go silent last.fm….
Matt
24 June, 00:02
@Tor: I’ll poke someone with a stick and get a post up here on the Day of Silence stuff, watch this space.
Michael Gregoire
24 June, 00:32
How about doing something about the lastfm client scrobbling problem?!
chad terry / terbospeed
24 June, 10:17
Yes silence upon silence will not bring about the talks that will keep these thieves from stealing the air from under our noses …
Whats up on the Day of Silence? Some silly american internet thing? Or a real threat? You guys are affected too, right?
Ben
24 June, 10:42
Within the last few months other large sites digg.com and livejournal.com have faced large scale revolts in the face of unpopular decisions and poor communication with their user bases. Don’t make last.fm the next site to go against its users.
Kirrus
24 June, 20:39
Give them a chance guys! This is not exactly simple technology they’re using! Things will go wrong: it is to be expected.
Have some patience. The last.fm guys are probably just as annoyed about the problems as you if not more so!
Sy
24 June, 23:50
Very true Kirrus, but it would be polite if they could put a message up saying that they are aware of the problems and that it is being looked into, rather than just ignoring all the shouts?
I’m sure everything will be cured eventually but it is annoying, it’s been 4 days of not working properly now!
Rarn
25 June, 00:37
Please. A revolt? There have been times where the submission server had been completely unstable for weeks, and charts never seemed to update. Things have been pretty much perfect lately, and a little bit of troubles some random weekend is no indication of last.fm spiraling downward
_. In general last.fm has been the most reliable its ever been, people really shouldn’t complain.Barbara
25 June, 00:44
Well, at least we know what pub you go to :)
Warren
25 June, 02:13
wake up…a movement is already gathering momentum to sink your site and you’re not helping by staying silent on your stance as to solidarity with other internet radio broadcasters as to the event on Tuesday or in general. I for one will make sure everyone I know uninstalls your client and never uses your site again EVER if you’re not participating. Guess what? Once this hits Digg you’re dead. Think it won’t happen? Just remember your users tried to warn you before it did. Good luck finding jobs. Give us an answer by Monday morning.
chad terry / terbospeed
25 June, 03:43
Hey. Its sunday. They are all probably playing golf. Give them a chance to recuperate from the weekend before they formulate a plan on the Day of Silence.
Anyway ilike.com has been getting pretty rave reviews. We are serious about freedom. And not down with anyone who wants to allow it to be taken.
Brian
25 June, 05:05
But you know what? I used to subscribe because I believed this was a great website and I wanted to support it.
But it does indeed crash many times and is rendered unusable for the sake of what is important, which is the scrobbling, and that doesn’t work quite often.
And since a service I wasn’t paying to support wasn’t working properly, I quit spending my money on it because I felt as if the last.fm staff was more concerned with adding flashy eye-candy to the already painfully slow site, for example the group features they are bragging about in this blog entry, and I hardly ever visit the 3 groups I am a member of, instead of ensuring that the proper meat of their service was working properly.
And it hasn’t scrobbled a damn thing since I got home from work tonight either.
closedmouth
25 June, 05:34
Warren, you have delusions of grandeur, SEEK HELP IMMEDIATELY
Don
25 June, 07:10
This past weekend’s meltdown can count as their day of silence.
Damon Till
25 June, 08:39
>> As per company tradition, we also snuck a few little features out the door in flagrant violation of the “No Releases On Friday, Jerks!” rule.
So amateur hour software release practices aside, why would you ever admit that in public? Bit embarrassing if things don’t go too well no?
>> We wouldn’t want you to have a boring weekend.
Like the site actually working you mean? Are you trying to annoy the users on purpose?
Peter
25 June, 09:36
Well yeah. It is pretty annoying the scrobbling isn’t working but oh well… When I first joined last.fm it hasn’t scrobbled my songs at all. So thank you last.fm! ^^
Jester-NL
25 June, 14:33
Exscuse me, but bragging about ‘snucking in a few little features in flagrant violation of the “No Releases On Friday, Jerks!” rule. We wouldn’t want you to have a boring weekend’ seems hardly an appropiate way to treat both your costumers or your mods.
Especially when leaving less then a skeleton-crew to handle the shit you call an “un-boring weekend”.
I do hope you enjoyed your weekend off…
Matt
25 June, 14:53
Sigh.
I need to formally apologize at this point — this entry officially wins the “WORST TIMING EVER” award.
Mere hours after this post went up, we suffered the first of multiple software + hardware failures, none of which had anything remotely to do with the features mentioned in this post. Russ and Jonty were off at Glastonbury, but the rest of us spent most of the weekend either at the datacentre (RJ and Tony) or trying to help debug / diagnose the problems (the rest of the web + systems teams.)
Hardly a weekend off. DEFINITELY the wrong time to mention the pub. :(
Warren
25 June, 16:40
@closedmouth:
I don’t believe for a second that I can singlehandedly do anything…I know 3 people who use last.fm so even if I convince all 3, so what right? well how many others who love last.fm might react as I will? 50? 100? 1000? who knows? That’s the kind of thinking that causes businesses to fail all the time. This is a larger cause than last.fm has given thought to. I’m sorry to say that I will no longer use this site because I think they should stand with the others who will also be affected. This includes independent podcasters, not just other large corporations. I can tell they put thought into it and they are good people, but they made the wrong decision in this case.
Kirrus
25 June, 16:59
Warren, they haven’t made any decision yet. Don’t jump to any conclusions, I think they’re a bit busy right now, trying to get the systems back online. They’ll get round to looking at the day of silence stuff when they can.
Be Patient.
Matt
25 June, 17:01
Felix has posted a blog entry on the Day of Silence here.
Comments are closed for this entry.