Free music provider shuts down
By Michaela Hulstyn
March 2, 2009 9:02 p.m.
UCLA officials are “left scrambling” after Ruckus, a free music service for college students, closed its doors unexpectedly last month, according to Jonathan Curtiss, manager of technology development for student and campus life.
UCLA had previously encouraged the use of Ruckus as part of its Get Legal campaign, and had recruited 5,000 subscribers at the time of its diminution, he said.
The program formerly offered free music downloads to PC users with .edu e-mail accounts at more than 200 universities across the United States. According to the Get Legal Web site, the Ruckus library held more than 3 million songs that could be downloaded straight to the user’s desktop.
Ruckus stopped providing its services unexpectedly in early February, according to Curtiss, who said he first learned the company had shut its doors from students who had e-mailed him saying their accounts wouldn’t work.
“We’ve had no further communication with the company,” he said.
Nevertheless, there are many other options for students to access music for free, said Assistant Dean of Students Kenn Heller.
“Ruckus just happened to be the one we selected,” Heller said.
While the university searches for a substitution, they will be recommending sites that suit student needs, such as Lala, Pandora and Modern Feed, all of which are free, Heller said.
Both Heller and Curtiss said the Ruckus service was not without its shortcomings. Users could not transfer their downloaded music to their iPods, and they could not burn CDs without paying a fee, and the player did not work on Mac computers. This historically made Ruckus unpopular with the student body.
Also, the 5,000 UCLA Ruckus subscribers did not necessarily use the program regularly, but had simply registered with the program Web site.
Jessica Kohley, a first-year undeclared student said she had never heard of Ruckus, and that she probably would not use a similar service, as she downloads songs solely to put them on her iPod.
Jaclyn Leduc, a third-year political science student echoed these sentiments. Although she had heard of Ruckus, she said she “might as well use Pandora.”
UCLA is looking into a variety of replacements for Ruckus, but Curtiss said they would not entertain programs that come at a cost to the user, directly or indirectly.
“We’ve heard it loud and clear that students do not want to pay a fee,” he said.
Heller said UCLA was not fiscally committed to Ruckus, and that the university went through this in the past with Cdigix, a free streaming program that discontinued its music service in April of 2007, according to Daily Bruin archives.
Both Heller and Curtiss expressed the need to promote legal downloading and file sharing amongst the student body. Students can be suspended for illegal downloading, as the university is federally required to respond to Recording Industry Association of America complaints, Heller said.
“The bottom line is that there is still a fair amount of exposure by using peer-to-peer clients versus streaming. … Students need to be careful where they’re getting (music) from,” Heller said.
