It’s almost too good to be true.
Now, because you are in possession of an email address ending in .edu, you are entitled to free music legally. As long as you have a PC and as long as you don’t want to actually use the music the way music is used these days, this is for you.
The Ruckus Network (ruckus.com) is a digital entertainment source.
On Jan 22, Ruckus announced that any student with a valid college email address could now access their music library, which comes standard with more than 2.4 million tracks.
To use Ruckus, go to the website and register for a free account. You are then entitled to download the Ruckus Player application, which is a program that you can use to listen to or make play lists with any music you download through Ruckus.
Here’s the catch: the free subscription only allows the user to download and listen to music with their computer and cannot burn discs. For $4.99 monthly, users can upload their music onto portable music devices- but not the iPod. If you purchase tracks individually, they are permanent downloads, which you are entitled to burn to CDs.
The system is advertisement supported. Unlike radio, however, your music is not bombarded with advertisements.
CEO, Mike Bebel, assured audiences in a podcast on podtech.net, “We don’t interrupt the listening experience at all. Both on the player application and the website you have banner advertisements, you have some rich media and video content and advertising wrapped around that, so its very non-intrusive but there is advertising throughout that experience, mostly visual and again we don’t interfere in any way with the audio experience.”
Ruckus was originally only available to schools with contract agreements and monthly fees. These schools had a cache system in their network that entitled their students to the free music service.
These schools are not losing out. Users from those schools benefit from faster downloads and better track quality. Ruckus is willing to add the cache system to more schools at their expense. Their only request is that the schools work with them to promote Ruckus on campus with their students.
Bebel was the former CEO of Mashboxx and COO of Napster. He has been with the company since last July. Ruckus was co-founded in 2003 by MBA students, David Galper and Vincent Han, while they attended MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Catering to the 18 to 24-year-old college demographic, Ruckus is also a social network – think Facebook revolving around music. Through Ruckus, subscribers can use their profiles to meet other people with similar music interests and use the community to help you discover music.
Users can make their favorite play lists available to their friends, enhancing their search for new music. Ruckus will even make their favorite play lists available to all users.
Ruckus takes “Top Songs” and “Top Albums” lists to a new level. Ruckus makes it easy to find the top tunes at a school. On users’ homepages, one can find the most played music from both their school and the entire network. Ruckus will also occasionally make it possible for users to view the most played music in different regions of the United States, including the top album of certain selected Universities.
Users can enjoy almost every feature of iTunes in a different format and without TV shows and games. Ruckus currently features a small selection of movies users can access with an additional fee. This is hopefully one section Ruckus will improve on in times to come. The titles offered are few and of little interest, so it almost doesn’t matter.
When you hear “free music legally” it sounds like a sweet deal. But add on the inconvenience of not being able to upload it onto my iPod? Unforgiveable. It gets too confusing having some music on iTunes and some on Ruckus. I’ll stick to buying music, thanks.
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