Ruckus, a free and legal digital music service for U.S. college students, said on Thursday it received $10 million in funding that it will use to expand the advertising-supported business.
The digital music service allows any U.S. student with a valid '.edu' e-mail address to join and download digital songs and movies legally. It says students from more than 900 schools nationwide have joined Ruckus since January.
Ruckus said this latest round of funding was led by two new investors, Anschutz Investment Co. and Columbia Capital. The company said the investment will be used to scale up the business, which has grown rapidly in recent months, and to develop additional services.
U.S. college students have been at the forefront of the digital music revolution, which took off in 1999 when Shawn Fanning, then a student himself, founded Napster, which allowed free but illegal downloading of digital songs. Though Fanning's Napster was eventually closed down by the legal action of major music companies, students turned to other services deemed illegal by the music industry.
Recent copyright infringement lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of the music industry have focused on discouraging college students who use file-sharing services to download music illegally.
Ruckus, which has nearly 3 million songs and a range of full-length films in its service, also has affiliate deals with 120 U.S. colleges to provide services to their students.
As well as helping its students avoid infringing copyright laws, U.S. colleges are eager to reduce excessive use of campus network bandwidth by Web-based file-sharing services popular with students. Napster Inc., a legal digital music service, also offers similar alliances with university campuses.
[via Reuters]
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