About this site
At song 46 in the 2006 triple j Hottest 100 countdown I decided to see how the "LIVE" player on the Triple J site was getting the track list. Looking at the HTTP requests the Flash movie was making I found it was loading a XML with a random number in the query string (to stop caching). The list must have been re-built on the server as each song was played on the radio as it was not a full 1-100 list but rather a list of the current song playing on the radio with a history of the rest. I tried to "hack" the request with a few obvious query string name/value pairs, but had no luck. I then had the idea of using this feed to build a site with some stats on the countdown as it happened. So I wipped up an XML fetcher and a parser to put the data in a database for some common queries. I then reworked a free skin from the Open Source Web Design collection and added some iTunes affiliate links to cover the hosting.
During the top ten, Western Sydney had a power outage (blackout) and soon after I went to a mates B&S themed BBQ so I didn't get to finish the site 'till the following day. But here it is anyway. Next year I hope to have the updates working LIVE
Update: 14 Feb 2007
Over a year on an still not where I picture it should be. I have just added the latest count down for 2007 and managed to get data for 16 other polls from the past. No XML here, this was all a manual grep on invalid HTML tables and lists and even lines separated with break returns (<br>).
I've added a basic stat to show artists that have had enough votes to get more than one track into the top 100 (in the past the Cure were the kings of this). I plan so add some more stats (and graph them with the Google Charts API) soon. Come back soon.
Update: 2 Feb 2009
I have added a cool little script to sort the table columns - thanks Joost.
I've also finally done some basic analytic reports on all the Hottest 100 countdowns (needs better formatting). It's amazing to see the number of inclusions by some artists. When working on these reports I noticed a lot of inconsistencies in the artists names (like "Doors" compared to "The Doors") so much of this has been cleaned up (let me know if you find anything as this will effect the stats)
Internally I have done some documentation for myself on how to pharse the data from Triple J and what else to update on the site each year, so hopefully you will see a quicker turnaround next year.
Also check out the 'Triple J' group on last.fm and what people are saying about the Hottest 100 on twitter.
Update: 15 Feb 2011
It's been awhile since updates. I missed the Australia Day traffic spike (normal lasts for a about 5 days) but I've update the db with the 2009 & 2010 countdowns. And finally the site has a new design (inspired by Google Analytics) which will allow for easier navigation and the room for some decent graphs… soon, soon.
Thank you to Cached Commons for the CDN hosting of Raphaël and gRaphaël which is used to show the top artists graphs.
