What was it like working at Last.FM?

[jrgp]

I saw in another thread you mentioned you worked there for 4 years. Was it fun? What did you work on?

I ask because I've been a scrobbler since 2007 and used to imagine what it would like to work there and the stack that stores all the scrobbles.

[mxcl]

It was some of the best years of my life. It was a very fun environment, full of people who loved music and were passionate about improving the experience of music in the burgeoning web-2.0 era.

I discovered so much great new music, and it was hard not to feel a little bit elite—a music snob—while working there. I attended some truly amazing shows, that otherwise I doubt I would have known about because the people there knew about all the best up and coming bands. Dare I say music was more interesting in the 2000s than it is now too (I guess I'm getting old).

The Last.fm “roof parties” were legendary in the area of London we were in, and often attracted a large and diverse crowd of music aficionados. Hosted on the roof of our office building in the summer or spring, they were loud, full of great music, grilled food and copious, delicious London real-ales.

I worked on the native apps, desktop and mobile. Our team was small relative to the web team, but it was really something to get to work on iPhone apps when the App Store wasn’t even released yet, and that definitely was good for my career. Our desktop app was C++/Qt, the years of C++ took their toll and I'd not go back willingly. It's what made me write Homebrew in Ruby.

It was an instrumental (no pun intended) period of my life, my first step into startups, my first job in central London, I was 25 and the world was my oyster and I took it with both hands held out full.

I think what I will always remember best is the people, who were super smart, passionate and genuinely wonderful men and women. Many of them are still good friends of mine today.

I worked there Jan–2007 through August–2009. So more like 2½ years.