

Last.fm web site primary and failover down - Hoff
http://www.last.fm/forum/21713/_/756000

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muppetman
Last.fm is usually so reliable that it being down seems almost unnatural. Hope
they're back soon, one of the few online services I feel is actually worth
paying for.

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shii
Extremely unusual. Last.fm has one of the best uptimes of any large site with
lots of constant traffic that I know of. I hope it's something benign and not
some catastrophic event.

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michh
Does anyone know how Last.fm is doing? I still love it, but I've seen a lot of
friends move away from it, to services that don't quite do the same like
Spotify and Grooveshark.

Is that just my friends or have they experienced a massive exodus? I'd be sad
if CBS pulled the plug at some point in the near future.

~~~
yoklov
I still use it, and most of my friends still use it, though I suspect that
using it solely for the statistics probably makes me (well, my friends too) an
odd man out.

The only time I've ever considered switching was when I was debating writing a
program to take the statistics myself, but then again... why bother?

Regardless, I know way more people using last.fm than I do who use
Grooveshark, and I don't really know anybody who uses Spotify. I'm not worried
about last, but you never know, maybe I should be.

~~~
cipherpunk
Here's a free software replacement for last.fm scrobbling: <http://libre.fm/>

I still use last.fm myself though.

~~~
chrischen
Also <http://like.fm>.

I use it: <http://like.fm/chris>

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andypants
That really does seem like a worst-case scenario (although at least they have
backups).

I'd be really interested in how it happened.

~~~
eli
I wonder if there's a cosmic law that makes such failures happen
disproportionately on Sunday.

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openbear
They should change the error message that shows up when people try to look at
their music history ...

"There was an error connecting to your Library. A page refresh should fix this
problem."

... if I didn't read Hacker News I'd be sitting there hitting refresh a bunch
of times :D Perhaps something simple like "please try back later" and link to
the original blog post.

Hope they get things resolved and CBS doesn't give them grief for the outage.
I've got almost six years of listening history on Last.fm and would hate to
see it go away.

~~~
lambda_cube
> if I didn't read Hacker News I'd be sitting there hitting refresh a bunch of
> times

Then I know some things that may help you in the future. At the bottom of
almost every page at Last.fm there four columns of links. In the column named
"Get Help" there is a link that says "System Status" which goes to:
<http://status.last.fm/> where you can see how different parts of the site are
running and a short explanation if there is a problem. I've never seen the
system status page go down, even when there are problems on other parts of the
site.

One time when Last.fm had some problem the links at the bottom of the page
went away. Since then I find it handy to have a bookmark to the system status
page.

Another thing to check are the forums (I wanna say fora :-), especially the
Web Site Support forum: <http://www.last.fm/forum/21713> . Usually the users
of the site notice problems before explanations go up at the system status
page and someone asks a question what is going on. The staff usually answers,
explain what is going on and sometimes say an estimate of when the problem
will be solved. In short, there are more details in the web site support forum
than on the system status page.

Hope this helps. :-)

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PidGin128
Since the originally submitted link was deleted from last.fm's forums, here's
the replacement, and a link to their blog:

[http://blog.last.fm/2011/07/18/library-and-streaming-
service...](http://blog.last.fm/2011/07/18/library-and-streaming-services-
outage)

<http://www.last.fm/forum/21713/_/756231>

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overshard
In the past 3 years or so I've used Last.fm almost non-stop. It had to be some
kind of hack or hosting service explosion.

------
8ig8
Details here, if you haven't seen them:
<http://www.last.fm/forum/21713/_/756000>

~~~
gaius
Now deleted.

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overshard
Netflix is down too, coincidental?

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dools
In the meantime if you feel like creating some playlists, check out
<http://cueyoutube.com> :)

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paul9290
i use last.fm weekly as i have a firefox plug in(fire.fm) at bottom right of
firefox that has play controls to start & stop my various stations. It makes
starting and listening to music effortless (fire.fm + last.fm)

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EponymousCoward
Reminds me of Magnolia.

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srl
"I know it's frustrating for you all but please bear with us -- I promise you
having to work on a Sunday afternoon rather than dozing on the sofa is just as
frustrating for us!"

Somebody is /really/ bad at PR: complaining about having to work to fix a
client's problems, even jokingly, is a bad idea, unless your goal is to weed
out the clients who take things too seriously.

