Over the years, the music industry has been bruised and beaten by music downloading and file sharing sites.
The industry took hit after hit as sites like Napster, Limewire and BitTorrent emerged as ways of obtaining music without having to pay for it.
Four years ago, however, a new company called Ruckus started with a mission to provide a free and legal way to access audio files.
"There are over 30 million tracks downloaded [illegally] every month," said Chris Lawson, director of corporate development for Ruckus, in an e-mail interview.
"Ruckus is the world's only free, legal and ad supported music discovery service for college students," Lawson said.
UM-St. Louis is one of more than 200 schools in partnership with Ruckus. In total, students at more than 1,100 universities are using the program.
Anyone with a .edu e-mail address can access all of the more than three million Windows Media Audio (WMA) song files from the major music labels and pick from thousands of indie titles, too.
However, the program offers more than music.
Thousands of free videos and films, including anything from music videos to movie trailers to student films to full-length independent, documentary and foreign films, can be found, Lawson said.
According to some students, however, the program has its drawbacks. Ben Gemignani, junior, communication, said the advertisements are a problem.
"[An] irritating, though probably necessary, aspect of the Ruckus system: the Web site ads," he said. "Like most Web sites these days, ruckus.com is packed to the brim with ads.
"There are talking ads, video ads, Flash ads, old-fashioned banner ads, moving ads and the kind of ad that will eat up the whole screen and present you with the option to 'skip this ad' when all you wanted to do was to see if Ruckus carried Audio Adrenaline. The ads all seem to have a tendency to load before the actual content does," Gemignani said.
The advertisements are necessary, Ruckus officials said. In order to offer this free and legal service, Ruckus works directly with the major record labels and indies. The company licenses the music and pays fees from its advertising revenue.
Companies including but not limited to Anschutz Investment Co. Llc., Columbia Capital, Battery Ventures, Eastward Capital, Pinnacle Ventures and Shelter Capital invest millions of dollars in Ruckus.
Cory Klatik, senior, international business and information systems, said the lack of support is also a drawback. "The largest letdown for the majority of owners of the portable devices [is that there is] NO iPOD (sic) support whatsoever," Klatik said. "In fact, there is no Mac support given. The only format offered is via the Windows Media format."
Lawson said the audio files are not compatible with all players, the iPod included, but there are plenty of players and cellular phones that are compatible with the WMA files. Ruckus files are not compatible with Mac computers for the same reason as the iPod. (A list of compatible devices is available at http://www.ruckusnetwork.com/trialpay/devices.html.)
"Ruckus is always hopeful that Apple will open up their platform so others can play too," Lawson said. "Apple does not allow the files to be played natively. Ruckus is currently working on a Mac solution as we speak, and will be available very soon."
Another drawback of the program is that the files cannot be burned to CDs. "The tracks are protected so that they cannot be illegally swapped," he said. "If they were burnable, they could then be ripped and swapped on a p2p (person to person) network. We do make all tracks available for purchase ($0.79-$0.99). Once you own the track, you can burn it or put it on any device."
Ruckus has recently teamed up with Facebook and created an application that offers the same share and discovery tools as the program. This allows a person with a Facebook account to share what they are listening to and downloading with his or her friends on the social networking site.
A recent press release from Ruckus stated, "With Ruckus, students can legally download and share music, create playlists, send personal media recommendations to friends and neighbors, browse classmates' profiles and media libraries, and meet new friends."
Lawson said, "The great thing is that it is better than free. It is legal, safe and allows for social media interaction like no one else. Through shared playlists, recommendations, most played and access to friends/other users' entire library, a student can find and instantly download any and all music that they find."
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