I've been using Ruckus for a while now because it's free to ASU students, but I've got to say that it is an absolutely horrid music download service. The software has almost no options, and it can't even play the music I already have on my laptop from ripped CDs! So of course I use it only for downloading and not for playing, but then it fucks up whenever you rename or move a song or edit the media information. Of course, as soon as Ruckus can't find the file, sooner or later the license will expire, and you have to renew it through Ruckus. Right now I'm redownloading a number of songs that had this happen. I'm also keeping the files where Ruckus puts them, even though the organizational scheme bugs the hell out of me. You see, the Ruckus database is primarily organized by Album Name rather than Artist Name, and I've already downloaded a number of songs that don't have an Artist Name in the database. I know, it's super retarded.

I've been messing around with the Yahoo music service for a little bit, and I like what I see. Like Ruckus, it's has unlimited downloads but no CD burning or mp3 player support. However, it's super cheap ($5/month instead of the standard $10/month) and it doesn't punish subscribers who want to purchase songs outright ($.79 per song for subscribers; $.99 per song normally). I've already noticed that Yahoo has a lot more of the indie songs I like than Ruckus, although I still can't find the new Mogwai album. Another good thing is all the Yahoo songs are encoded at 192kbs rather than the standard 128kbs that the other big subscription service, Napster, uses. Ruckus songs are sometimes at 192kbs, and sometimes not. So I'll continue to use Ruckus because it's free, but once I graduate, I'll probably switch to Yahoo.

Besides, I love their widget software!