Silencing the Ruckus?

 For sometime now, college students have had an alternative method of obtaining the latest music, (other than the usual illegally pirating from limewire).Ruckus hit college campuses like a storm, spreading mostly by word of mouth, and the occasional newspaper spot. Ruckus was amazing, it gave unlimited free access to millions of music titles, and allowed that holy demographic (18-25) exclusive access. It is user friendly, customizable, and full of great titles, but more importantly, students are using it.It must be said, that Ruckus is not without its faults. The titles you download from Ruckus can only be played on the Ruckus music player on your computer, and cannot be transferred your Ipod. I cannot stress how detrimental that is to the success of Ruckus, or perhaps I can… If Ruckus tracks were able to be played on an mp3 player it would single handedly dominate the market and put an end to music pirating all together, there I said it. But is that even possible? Now in defense of Ruckus, there are forces outside of their control that prevent them allowing their tracks to play on mp3 players, namely Apple Inc., who is having marginal success with their on-line music store, in which customers are actually paying 99 cents a song to be able to play the tracks wherever they please. So what does this mean for Ruckus?Unfortunately, a message running on the Ruckus website says that unless one million new users begin using Ruckus, the website will be forced to shut down. If their advertisements aren’t reaching enough people, the advertisers have threatened to pull out.  And who is the real loser in all of this?Not Ruckus.The real loser is the record companies who are once again going to have a large population again illegally downloading music. Ruckus paid the record companies from the advertising revenue generated by the site, but without Ruckus, its back to the hallowed halls of limewire for many students. But perhaps there is a larger lesson to be learned by Ruckus.Water will always flow in the path of least resistance.For the record company, that means that people will always obtain music by the cheapest avenue possible, especially if that avenue is Free St.. So in reality, if Ruckus shuts down, the real loser is the ailing record companies, because if it shuts down… Here we come again… we’re hungry for music, and in the on-line universe, there are plenty of free buffets.