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Ruckus.com fails to impress

Matt Hewitt,
Grand Central Magazine

In order to download tracks, you actually have to visit the Ruckus website. There is no way to search for downloadable tracks within the media player. The media player opens up the default Internet browser installed to the computer and directs you to ruckus.com to search for music. Photograph by stock photo
(Click here for more images.)

The concept is promising. Ruckus provides free music downloads to anyone with a college e-mail address. Just sign up, search for your favorite artists and download to your heart’s content.

Sounds easy enough, right?

It’s not easy. It’s not fun. It isn’t even worth the trouble.

If Ruckus were the only way to download music on the internet, I would simply stop downloading music. Yes, it’s that bad.

Ruckus is so littered with advertising it’s actually hard to use. I realize the advertising helps pay for the free music, but the ads actually hinder the usability of the program.

In order to begin downloading, you must first download the Ruckus media player. The media player is very basic. It doesn’t offer many of the features most people have grown accustomed to by using iTunes or Windows Media Player. Ruckus will not organize your library into stacks or allow you to shuffle through album art like you can in iTunes.

All Ruckus will do is let you listen to music.

But it won’t play tracks downloaded from iTunes. Nor will not play Digital Rights Management-encrypted files from the Zune Marketplace. It can only play non-DRM files and songs encrypted with Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM.

In order to download tracks, you actually have to visit the Ruckus website. There is no way to search for downloadable tracks within the media player. The media player opens up the default Internet browser installed to the computer and directs you to ruckus.com to search for music.

Once you find a song or album to download (after navigating through a maze of cluttering, annoying advertisements), you’re able to click a few checkboxes and download the music. The Website doesn’t allow you to preview tracks; the only way to listen to what you are thinking about downloading is to actually download it. The music begins downloading back in the Ruckus media player, and once it is finished you are able to listen to it.

The music downloads are low bit-rate (usually 128 or 192 kbps) and are encrypted with Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM.

In order to begin downloading, you must first download the Ruckus media player. The media player is very basic. It doesn't offer many of the features most people have grown accustomed to by using iTunes or Windows Media Player. Ruckus will not organize your library into stacks or allow you to shuffle through album art like you can in iTunes. Photograph by stock photo
(Click here for more images.)

You cannot burn the songs to a CD, and the ability to transfer them to a device requires you to upgrade your account to a paid subscription. But don’t go forking over your hard earned cash just yet. Ruckus uses a form of DRM that is incompatible with iPods, so you are unable to transfer your music to any type of iPod or Apple device.

In fact, this type of DRM isn’t even compatible with Microsoft’s Zune. In order to transfer the music to a device, you have to own a product with the Microsoft Playsforsure logo (now renamed Windows Vista Capable). With the exception of Creative’s family of music players, most students do not own a Playsforsure device.

I can’t imagine Ruckus being popular with many students unless you do most of your listening at the computer. With more and more students buying MP3 players (mostly iPods or Zunes), the lack of portability will be a turn-off for most.

However, if you really enjoy finding new artists or can’t pass up the idea of free music, Ruckus does have a pretty large library. It may not rival iTunes in the different types of content available, but Ruckus does have both mainstream artists and lesser-known independent groups.

I recommend using Ruckus to try out new music before buying the album on a more popular site that actually allows you transfer music and burn discs.

You can download the Ruckus media player and sign up for an account at www.ruckus.com.