I'm going to drop some info about
Ruckus online music store service as I think that some (a few but still) might be interested.
To keep it short: It's a
FREE "ad-supported" service available to individuals in the United States with an ".edu" email address. Officially it is for, ahem, current "students" as it asks for a graduation date and such (changes to a charged service after that if you chose to continue with it). You download the music onto your computer in a restricted format that requires the files license to be updated monthly from that player. Thus, you cannot burn the songs to a cd or transfer them to a portable player and the files only play through certain applications (windows media player, the ruckus player, probably winamp(?)).
However, it is hard to argue with FREE. The ads on the player are hardly noticeable and navigating the site is easy (especially with firefox's adblock/flashblock plugins). The selection is fairly comprehensive - they've got new and old stuff from the major labels, power hitter indie labels, and start-ups. I've been using it for about a year and found it to be a great way to try out copious amounts of music, especially the stuff dropped on this site by all of you, without going broke.
Currently Ruckus is claiming that it needs a few million more people to join, otherwise it won't be able to offer the service for free anymore. Their marketing record hasn't exactly been
reputable so who knows what will happen.
Anyways, any negatives of the service are irrelevant because it's hard to beat free (if you qualify). So if you have an .edu email address; want to save money and 'sample' music without illegally downloading (because you support the artists or you gave it up for lent, etc.); and are tired of hunting down broken links to fuzzy streams then I recommend giving it a try.
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What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
