When listeners tune into the ABC’s Triple J Hottest 100 countdown online on Australia Day, managed service provider Hostworks will be ensuring that fans won’t encounter streaming delays or dropouts.
The countdown, based on listener’s votes from Triple J, plays the top 100 songs of 2012 from 12pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) through to around 8pm. According to ABC data from last year, 26,000 people tuned in via the Internet from around Australia and countries such as New Zealand, the UK, China and Canada.
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Hostworks provided the streaming service using its Shoutcast server and elastic cloud compute platform for the 2012 countdown. The deal with Triple J came about as a result of the company’s partnership with the ABC iview streaming service.
Speaking to Computerworld Australia, Hostworks general manager of technology, strategy and innovation, Adrian Britton said there will be a dedicated team of employees undertaking a “pre-flight” check of its systems to make sure there are no issues when the Hottest 100 begins.
“As the Triple J countdown streaming is running they will be dedicated to watching the metrics flowing through the system and watching the analytics flowing back to ensure a smooth operation,” he said.
This service will be provided through the company’s customer management centre in Adelaide.
“The advantage of using the elastic compute platform [in 2012] was that we could grow the infrastructure behind the scenes in real time,” he said. “As the Hottest 100 was running, the platform added additional infrastructure as the audience grew.”
After last year's countdown, Hostworks provided listener demographics data to the radio station. According to Britton, most listeners streamed the service using their mobile phones with a large quantity of mobile traffic coming from Apple iOS devices.
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