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Again, thanks to Mr. O’Connell for the Tech IT flyer he gave me. I found a small blurb on it entitled, “Illegal music downloading.” I figured it would be all about how we shouldn’t download free music because it was illegal. But, surprisingly, it was about how to download free and legal music. The site is: http://www.ttu.edu/legalmusic/.
I decided it was worth a shot. I logged onto Ruckus, the company Tech partnered with to get us free music. It took me about 5 minutes to create an account, get my confirmation e-mail, download and install the program and restart my computer.
One of the big selling points for me is that it doesn’t download anything bad at the time time it is downloading the music. I’ve had this problem when my son has downloaded music and have had to ban him from a few sites that I could not trust.
To search for music I decided to try Josh Groban and was surprised to find his new album. There are over 2 million tracks and all kinds of music you can download to your computer. You would have to pay $15 (this covers the rest of the semester)to download it to your i-pod.
And Ruckus also has an on-line community. I browsed through a few people, and realized this may not be one of the more private sites. For one community member, Scott, it had his gender, his graduation year and his school e-mail address. These are all things you must supply when you sign up for this site. It also had a place for lots of other things, but you have to put that in yourself. It did show his recently played and most played songs.
The really annoying part of this site is: Ruckus tv. In addition to commercials being displayed on the site, it plays a loop of “tv” commercials while you download your music. It was easy enough to shut off, though, by just muting it.
Final thought? If you don’t want your tech e-mail address out there for anybody to see, don’t sign up for this site. If you do want to find college friends who share the same taste in music, and you don’t mind your Tech e-mail being out there, this is a good site for you.
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With respect to your comment “If you don’t want your tech e-mail address out there for anybody to see, don’t sign up for this site.”
… Upon creating a Ruckus account, only members of your network (your college) can see this information.
As with most social networking sites, Ruckus allows you to simply change your Privacy settings so that this information is no longer publicly available.
The same goes for your recently played and downloaded music — you can choose to hide this information if you wish it. However, this ability to see what your friends and fellow classmates are listening to is one of the more popular features on Ruckus.
At Ruckus, we understand the growing need for detailed privacy settings — we hope our users take full advantage of these settings as they best relate to their own personal preferences.
Full disclosure — I work for Ruckus.
Comment by ruckusmusic March 3, 2007 @ 4:12 pmThank you, and consider me corrected.
Comment by mcomchapman March 4, 2007 @ 3:05 pm