Total Music Shuts Down, Taking Ruckus With It

I'm building up quite a backlog of things to write about! Here's news that Univesal and SonyBMG's Total Music and its college music download service Ruckus have given up.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/159258/the_day_the_music_service_ruckus_died.html

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/02/universal-sony-total-music-is-a-total-dud.ars

Matt Rosoff notes that not even free can compete with free:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10161622-27.html

Here's Total Music's VP of Product Management practically begging for a standardized set of platform APIs for accessing music legally:
http://globallistic.blogspot.com/2009/02/hey-who-tripped-over-that-cord.html