fowa 2007: last.fm - lessons from building the world’s largest social music platform (by matt ogle...

8/15/2019 FOWA 2007: Last.FM - Lessons from Building The World’s Largest Social Music Platform (by Matt Ogle & Anil Bawa Cavia)

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Lessons from BuildingThe World’s Largest

Social Music PlatformMatthew Ogle & Anil Bawa Cavia

FoWA 2007



How does it work?



How does it work?

Listen- to your own music

- to Last.fm radio



How does it work?


- to Last.fm radio

Share-your taste

instead of files

- automatic, via

“scrobbling”



How does it work?


- to Last.fm radio

Share-your taste

instead of files

- automatic, via

“scrobbling”

Discover- via your friends

- via people with

similar taste



15 million tracks scrobbled / day




(175 scrobbles per second)





Over 6 billion tracks scrobbled since 2003






10 million artists






10 million artists70 million tracks






10 million artists

70 million tracks

700k tracks streamable on Last.fm radio






10 million artists

70 million tracks


17 million items tagged






10 million artists

70 million tracks


17 million items tagged145k artist wikis



Last.fm World Domination Headquarters

Whitechapel, London, 2004



Early Growth Lessons




Don’t overextend – scale with your growth, not before





Make sure revenue sources scale with increased usage






Google ads






Google ads

User subscriptions






Google ads

User subscriptions

Involve users in your web application’s story






Google ads

User subscriptions


Make growth a selfish aim for existing users






Google ads

User subscriptions


Make growth a selfish aim for existing users

Be as open as you can afford



Audioscrobbler.com homepage, late 2004



Openness and Growth



Openness and Growth

In 2004, we had a cool service, but needed data



Openness and Growth


Audioscrobbler Protocol 1.0



Openness and Growth



Webservices for accessing users’ music profile data



Openness and Growth




Together, provided “round trip” incentive for plugin developers



Openness and Growth





Winamp, iTunes, WMP, Amarok



Openness and Growth






Foobar, QCD, mpd, XMMS, mpg321



Openness and Growth







Noatun, Quod Libet, Jinzora, Ampache



Openness and Growth







Noatun, Quod Libet, Jinzora, Ampache

(and dozens more)



Openness and Users



Openness and Users

Involve non-technical users as well



Openness and Users


Promote a community around your application



Openness and Users



Talk to your users (bad news > no news)



Openness and Users



Talk to your users (bad news > no news)

More likely to tolerate growing pains…



Moving into the new office

Old Street, London, May 2006



Growing up



process

Growing up



process

product

Growing up



process

Growing up

• 20 to 40+ employees in 6 months



process

Growing up


• “people trump process”



process

Growing up



• simple tools are effective tools



process

Growing up



• simple tools are effective tools

• radiate information across different

channels in the company



Growing upprocess excerpt from #last.fm irc channel




irccat: SVN commit by norman (23872) 'randomSplitter: splits data into train and test sets randomly' (changeset: https://admindev.last.fm/

trac/changeset/23872)

https://admindev.last.fm/trac/changeset/23872









3:40 PM










3:40 PM

irccat: *** jonty is refreshing webnodes now: 'Fix for group owners'










3:40 PM


mischa: jonty: memcache key should be set to: java-playlist-10093 where 10093 ==userid.










3:40 PM



irccat: Trac: ticket #1779 (http://support.last.fm/trac/ticket/1779) changed by julian, Comment: Fixed for the next release..

http://support.last.fm/trac/ticket/1779











3:40 PM




irccat: number of anon flash streams is 1440, number of registered flash streams is 764












3:40 PM





felix: hey abc when did you put the adsense leaderboard on bottom cat pages live?












3:40 PM






abc: friday












3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM












3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM

mokele: ? lookup track 11082618












3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM


irccat: track.id(11082618) Zetan Spore ??? Subspace Distortion http://www.last.fm/music/Zetan+Spore/_/Subspace+Distortion (lastfm=t)

http://www.last.fm/music/Zetan+Spore/_/Subspace+Distortion













3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM



pete_bug: jonty, can you please suspend PP campaign 3670?














3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM




jonty: pete_bug, sure one sec.














3:40 PM






abc: friday

3:45 PM




jonty: pete_bug, sure one sec.

irccat: Trac: ticket #1526 (http://support.last.fm/trac/ticket/1526) "group recommendations are slow" created by muz.















product

Growing up



product

Growing up

• 15 million unique users a month



product

Growing up


• plan for going global



product

Growing up



• affiliations should enhance the user

experience



product

Growing up




experience

• harness critical mass



product

Growing up




experience

• harness critical mass

• embed your service in others

• make the transition from service toplatform



product

Growing up

harness critical mass



product

Growing up




product

Growing up


user-generated content



product

Growing up



network effects of socialization



product

Growing up




affiliate services



product

Growing up



user moderation


affiliate services



product

Growing up



drives feature design



product

Growing up



product

Growing up

embed your service in others



product

Growing up


quilts



product

Growing up


quilts charts



product

Growing up


quilts charts radio



product

Growing up


allow users to export



product

Growing up



product

Growing up

transition from service to platform



product

Growing up




Attention and “Myware”




When you pay attention to something (or don’t), data is created





Myware: spying on yourself






Attention economy alters traditional meaning of “active user”






Attention economy alters traditional meaning of “active user”

Social web + attention aggregators = where the action is



Attention data

Monetizing attention



Attention data


1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form.



Attention data



2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.



Attention data



2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it.



Attention data




4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the

microchunk.



Attention data




4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the

microchunk.

Fred Wilson, The Future of Media, November 2005



Attention data




Attention data


Powerplay is sponsored airtime



Attention data



Individualized targeting based on attention history



Attention data




New attention metrics for reporting



Attention data




New attention metrics for reporting

No more CPMs - the ‘scrobble’ is our attention unit



Case study: tag cloud moderation

Attention data




Attention data

Paris Hilton tag cloud, October 2006




Attention data

Paris Hilton tag cloud, October 2006 Paris Hilton tag cloud, February 2007



Attention data




Attention data

Censorship is not acceptable in a folksonomy




Attention data


Attention data does not lie




Attention data



Weigh user tags by volume of attention user gives

to content




Attention data



Weigh user tags by volume of attention user gives

to content

Attention earns trust




Future of Last.fm



more

Future of Last.fm



more

less

Future of Last.fm



more

Future of Last.fm



more

Future of Last.fm

• more growth



more

Future of Last.fm

• more growth

• more streamable music



more

Future of Last.fm

• more growth


• more ambient findability



more

Future of Last.fm

• more growth


• more ambient findability

• more personalization /

things you can do with your data



less

Future of Last.fm



less

Future of Last.fm

• fewer interfaces



less

Future of Last.fm


• fewer barriers to entry



less

Future of Last.fm


• fewer barriers to entry

• fewer gradients?



Thank-you.

Questions?

[email protected] [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]




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