Free Music Downloads for College Students?

My friend, Suzanne Millward, recently introduced me to a supposedly free music-downloading site aimed at college students called Ruckus Network. Curious to see if it was for real, I joined the service last night and was impressed at first but ultimately disappointed.

Ruckus is available free of charge to any college student with a valid .edu email account and for $9 per month to alumni and faculty members. Users have the ability to download almost entire CDs and single tracks of their favorite artists, but their selection is still lacking when compared to iTunes? music library (which has over 5 million tracks available to their 3 million).

Speaking of iTunes or anything related to Apple Inc., any music file downloaded from Ruckus isn?t compatible with the iPod or the Macintosh OS. Going further, some of the tracks I was looking for couldn?t even be downloaded because Ruckus didn?t retain the song?s licensing rights from the record companies.

Ruckus was co-founded by David Galper and Vincent Han while attending the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2003. On January 22, 2007, the company announced that they had locked up licensing deals with all four major record labels — Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI Music ? as well as making a switch to a free, advertising-supported approach to their services.

The excitement of a possible way to get music online in a legal manner has all but fizzled in my mind. I see myself using Ruckus to test out some songs worth listening to, just like how I browse through MySpace pages and YouTube videos of artists I?m interested in.

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 Economics, School

2 Comments to Free Music Downloads for College Students?

  1. nothing,s free unless you steal.

    2. Scott Leong on August 20th, 2007

  2. Yeah, Ruckus is a big bummer.

    3. Suzanne Millward on March 27th, 2008

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