Playlog.jp is a community blog from Sony Japan that’s spiced with always fresh content based on the music users are listening to on their computers. Registered users of playlog.jp can upload information about a song that’s currently playing on their desktop via a helper plug-in that works with iTunes [Apple] and SonicStage [Sony] and discover new users and music based on the songs they have listened on their computer. This unique approach to weblogs is found to stir more interest among its users because users of playlog.jp always have something to share and write about since their personalized page is always up-to date with fresh content. Currently there are more than 2.6 Million songs played within the playlog.jp community.

Technology: Server side technology for playlog.jp is built using Java (1.5) and PostgreSQL running as the database server. A custom application server (also build in Java) is developed to overcome the heavy load of constantly updating music information from users and matching it against the Japanese Music Catalog (90K+ Artists, 230K+ Albums, 2.2M+ songs) and heavy load from the guest and registered online users (10K+ during peak times) requesting from the large catalog of music. Currently, playlog.jp load is distributed to multiple servers that are running different tasks within the server farm. To maximize the matching percentage of users’ music data against the music catalog, ILG Studios also built a fuzzy Japanese search engine. With the help of this unique search engine Japanese words can be matched to their English phonetic translations.