After spending the weekend browsing Ruckus' library and downloading over 1,000 songs, here's my review.
Ruckus is a decent digital music store, and the fact that it offers free and legal music is very nice. Downloading is also quite easy; you simply need to select the tracks you want, or the entire album, and hit download. However, there are some bad points to this service.
Selection: 2.5 million songs may sound like a lot, but there were multiple occassions where the band I was looking for wasn't included. However, most artists that I had trouble finding were of the "classic rock" genre, including The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, so for older tunes this might not be the best choice. I suppose the creators felt that college students were only interested in more contemporary music. Also, many of the bands that are available for download have only a few songs from a few albums, often excluding the most popular tracks.
Mp3 Players: Yeah...as for mp3 players, they're pretty much useless with these files. Because of the DRM Ruckus has to put on its files to make them available for download, their songs can't be burned to CDs or transferred to most mp3 players including the iPod. So if you want to build your computer's library go ahead, but don't get rid of iTunes just yet.
Searching: The Ruckus web site used for searching for songs isn't all that great. Sometimes when searching for a band or an album I got strange results, and had to instead search for a specific track and follow a few links to the right place.
Overall I would rate Ruckus a 3 out of 5, for a mediocre music store with a decent library of songs. Its only real saving point is that it's a legal alternative to other free services like Limewire.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Thanks for the review.
Just a quick note -- Ruckus doesn't have tracks from Led Zepplin and The Beatles because the digital distribution rights to those two artists aren't given to ANY online music store -- Napster, iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.
In the futre, as these artists hopefully release the digital rights to their music, you can bet that Ruckus will make these tracks available.
(Full disclosure - I work for Ruckus.)
O_O
What a coincidence.
The weakness of Ruckus is its ability to provide the music that is drm protected. http://liquidparallax.com/2007/04/14/listen-to-25-million-tracks-students-only/ the legalities involved of fair to use is readily argued. If comapanies such as ruckus could provide a fair to use model and allow music to be transferred to any device ipod etc. Whether a student or lower income family are left with little options or no options for digital devices where a 100 songs cost 100 dollars. Very soon mobile devices will be the norm and access to the internet via broadband will be accessable to all. Streaming pandora.com or some such streaming source will be via bluetooth and the need for sirius, xm, and Ruckus will die if they do not adapt. The music industry can set all the restrictions they want but ultimately the public will grow sick of greed and find alternatives. Hopefully those alternatives are affordable and enjoyable for all. DRM protected music stinks, but at least its free. The methods to free yourself of drm is readily available and I will not discuss this here. Ultimately I give Ruckus a 8/10 as it is the ONLY model that offered free music to college students. DRM or not they need to be complemented on this accomplishment.
Post a Comment