Ruckus is no more

[pmp6nl]

Ruckus is no more  .

College Online Music Service Ruckus Closes Down
Saturday February 7, 6:35 am ET
By Rafat Ali

Ruckus Networks, the Herndon, VA-based college music and digital media service, has closed down, according to a notice on its site, picked up by TC. The company started in 2004 as a subsidized subscription service in about 82 colleges and universities in U.S., but didn't do as well, and retooled a few month later in early 2007 as a free, ad-supported, Windows Media-DRM laden downloadable service for anyone with a .edu address. At that point, for an extra $15 a semester, students could also access 4,000 movies and TV shows. University faculty and alumni could also use the network, but had to pay a monthly fee.

But as with college students everywhere, the alternatives were too lucrative (being free and unrestricted: the service wouldn't play on iPods or even MSFT's own Zunes), as other competing services from *Napster*, RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Cdigix also found out along the way. In fact Cdigix closed down its college service early 2007.

Ruckus was backed by Battery Ventures, Shelter Capita, Eastward Capital and Pinnacle Ventures, and raised a total of $22.7 million in two rounds, as of late 2006. Not clear: if it raised any more money after that. It even hired digital media vet Michael Bebel as CEO then. Bebel was previously CEO of Pressplay when it was acquired by Roxio, and became president and COO of the Napster division.

That didn't work either, apparently, and Ruckus was later sold to TotalMusic, the major labels-led digital music service that didn't materialize away after a DoJ antitrust investigation. The Sony and UMG music JV wanted to use Ruckus' technology as as a backend service, but that never happened as well. 

From:  http://biz.yahoo.com/paidcontent/090207/1_333368_id.html?.v=1


Sad, now I will have to find a new place to get free, legal music.

[Sal Atticum]

If you want to do the best thing you can to ensure that music is free and available, go to your favorite band's concerts.  Write to them and tell them that you love them and want to spread them around.  Giving music away is the new model that is going to put the band in control-not the record label.

In the past, you needed a label to foot the bill for promotion because nobody could afford print, television, and radio advertising.  With the rise of the Internet, this is no longer the case.  Each band has the power to get the word out and get people to their shows (where the real money is made) by freely distributing most or all of their musical creations.  So if you want to get the best deal for everyone, tell your bands to ditch the label and go to their shows when they come through.  Then pass their CDs or MP3s around like mad.

I never thought Ruckus would work--proprietary software is a failed concept when there are easy and free alternatives, especially when you realize that not all college students actually have a computer of their own.

[pmp6nl]

Nice post and idea.