A Sea Of Red

Anybody else hear about this today??????


Any Student with Valid .edu Email Address Can Now Access 2.1 Million Tracks from Leading Legal Music Service

HERNDON, VA, Jan. 22, 2007 – Ruckus, the legal music downloading service, is now free for all college students nationwide. Every student on America’s college and university campuses now has free and legal access to the world’s first, advertising supported college-only, music download service, Ruckus, from Ruckus Network, Inc. The Ruckus service, previously available only at schools with contractual agreements with Ruckus, can now be accessed by any student with a valid .edu email account.

With today’s announcement, Ruckus users everywhere now have easy and immediate access to the recently expanded library of more than 2.1 million high fidelity, virus-free music tracks from every major label, as well as an impressive and expansive list of independent labels. Ruckus eliminates copyright infringement through its licensing agreements with all of the major international record labels, as well as thousands of independent labels and artists.

Additionally, Ruckus users can use the service’s social networking features such as user profiles, comment boards and shared play lists. Ruckus users can send personal media recommendations to friends and neighbors, browse classmates’ profiles and media libraries, meet new friends and use the “Invite A Friend” feature to share the Ruckus experience with all their friends at any college or university through popular email, search and contact management systems including AOL, MSN Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook, GMail, and Yahoo!

“Free and legal digital music has just become broadly available to the most active and engaged music consumer group on the planet,” said Michael Bebel, President and CEO of Ruckus. “This is a major milestone for Ruckus, but much more importantly, for the growing community of college and university students and faculty we have been interacting with for the past three years. We look forward to providing the same great user experience with an incredible library of content, to an even greater number of users nationwide.”

Several hundred thousand college students have already joined the Ruckus community, however with the service now open to all students with a valid .edu email account, the user base is expected to grow significantly. “You can’t beat free when it comes to downloading music,” says Matt Hitch, Northeastern University. “Lots of my friends at other schools always talk about how great the Ruckus service is, and I’m really happy I can use it now too. The Ruckus service has a great music library, it is easy to use and it’s going to get a lot more popular now that it is more widely available.”

Ruckus Raised Across U.S. Campuses
Ruckus has become the free and legal multimedia delivery service of choice at America’s colleges and universities. The service has been adopted through contractual agreements with more than 100 schools including Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, Indiana University, the University of Southern California, the University of Denver, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Students at these and other schools who have signed agreements with Ruckus enjoy an enhanced user experience, including faster downloads, improved network bandwidth, lower campus network infrastructure costs and access to additional video content. As a result, the Ruckus subscriber base has grown fourteen-fold during the past 12 months.

How To Sign Up
Ruckus is now available to any student with a valid .edu email account. Just go to Ruckus.com, click on “Join Ruckus”, enter your school email address and get started. The registration process only takes a few minutes.

About Ruckus Network, Inc.
Ruckus Network, Inc. provides the premiere digital entertainment network designed specifically for college students. The Ruckus experience blends college students’ top interests – friends and entertainment – to create a strong sense of community at universities across the country. Whether looking for a roommate with similar interests or someone who enjoys hip hop music as much as they do, Ruckus members are able to find friends through media and media through friends. Today, the Ruckus service is available to hundreds of thousands of U.S. college students and is quickly becoming the brand of choice for higher education institutions nationwide. For more information, please visit our corporate site at www.RuckusNetwork.com or our service at www.Ruckus.com.

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For more information contact:

Tim Hurley or Andrew Soucy
BluePoint Venture Marketing
781-861-7800
tim@bluepointmktg.com
andrew@bluepointmktg.com

Chris Lawson
Ruckus Network
703-464-6551
clawson@ruckus.com

Question: Will Ruckus music play on my iPod/iPhone?

Answer: Ruckus will work with many mp3 players, but unfortunately not iPods or iPhones.

The Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM sucks. Majorly. It sucks so bad that Microsoft didn't even use it for their own store/player, the Zune. I'm not a fan of DRM, but if I have to pick one it will be Apple's DRM because it's by far the most flexible and lenient on that market. I may have to pay for the songs, but at least I can burn them to a CD or put them on my iPod without having to go through any hassles.

Basically, I'm not interested in this service.

So in other words, its a great way to hear stuff to see if you want to buy it from iTunes. Si o no?

i may try that if i have time

Sly Fox wrote:So in other words, its a great way to hear stuff to see if you want to buy it from iTunes. Si o no?

If you're using a computer running Windows XP, then si.

SCORCHO- please explain how all that stuff you just said affects people like me (non-techies)

are you saying these downloads will not play on conventional mp3 players or burn to CD's?

These downloads will only play on digital audio players labeled with the "PlaysForSure" logo. They will also not burn to CD's as audio.

That about sums it up.

got it.

thanks

(never heard of that PLAYFORSURE thing)

P.S.

If you download music from this joint, and decide to cancel your account at some point, all of your music will stop working.

I tried to sign up and got this message:

Your school has not been added to the Ruckus database yet. Howerver, any student with a valid "schoolname.edu" email account can get immediate access to free music by selecting the "Ruckus Direct" box below.

If you would like your school to have its own network on Ruckus in the future, please send a note to sales@ruckus.com and include your contact info.

El Scorcho wrote:P.S.

If you download music from this joint, and decide to cancel your account at some point, all of your music will stop working.

same with the new pay Napster- we found out the hard way that my wife basically RENTED the music for a year.



all those monthly subscriptions and 300 songs or so that had to be deleted. (No, they wouldn't burn to a disc either)

There are ways you can convert the DRM file to MP3...
...but I can in no way support that sort of behavior.

Was I naïve for getting my hopes up when I saw the title of this thread?

Yes.

If only allofmp3 would start accepting credit cards again.

Fumblerooskies wrote:There are ways you can convert the DRM file to MP3...
...but I can in no way support that sort of behavior.

The problem with that is that if we all keep paying for DRM'ed files and then stripping them of their protection, the folks selling the DRM'ed files will only see the sales numbers, and then assume that we must be a-okay with all of the DRM silliness.

As I said before, I buy from iTunes only because it's the only store with a DRM scheme that lets me do what I actually want to do with my music. But I've pretty much downsized my iTunes purchases to songs exclusive to their store. Otherwise, I'd rather just buy the CD and rip it to VBR mp3's myself. It seems like more hassle in the beginning but it doesn't require any futzing around later to use my files the way I want to.

I shy away from iTunes because of the DRM. While not as intrusive as some other forms, they limit the number of computers that can play your files. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but I've had so many computer problems in the past few years that it now appears to iTunes that I've authorized 4 computers, when in fact I've only ever played my iTunes music on one computer. It's just that everytime my computer had to go in for repairs, I re-authorized my computer each time I got it back. If I'd been told to de-authorize my iTunes before each repair, I wouldn't have this problem. Eventually, though, I'm going to have to call Apple and fight them (again—long story) to reset my number of authorizations.

The way I see it, DRM is nothing but a nuisance, and it accomplishes little more that that. Those who want to steal their music will steal it, with or without the obstacle of DRM.