University Tax, Touch Mix, Google Deletes Posts from Blogs

Ruckus‘ closure of  leaves room for other companies to target universities, get mobile remixing with Touch Mix, and Google adopts a new policy towards music sharing blogs. Here’s the newest in technology:

• Ruckus, a music service directed at college students, shut down this weekend. The service wasn’t compatible with Macintosh, and charged $15 a month for free access to tracks embedded with copyright protection software (DRM), which apparently wasn’t user-friendly enough for students. To fill the void, Warner Music is backing Choruss, a program that plans to exact payment first from universities then ISP’s, amounting to a compulsory “tax” for music. Will universities agree to a file-sharing blanket license? [Wired]
• The new iPhone/iPod touch application Touch Mix allows you to remix 10 Deadmau5 songs. The house producer endorsed the app, which will have a more open version in the future that will allow you to import other songs. The mobile mixer lets you switch between two virtual decks, each with cross-fader and volume controls. You can adjust BPMs, scratch, and apply effects like delay and flanger. Check it out at the Apple App Store. [Music Radar]

• Blogs on Google’s platform Blogger that distribute free mp3’s are at risk. It’s been reported that Google is, without warning, deleting posts that contain or link to illegal music. They don’t unpublish the post, they erase it, forever. Since blog scanning is done by software, they can’t know for sure whether or not the distribution is actually legal. There are cases of bloggers that had permission to publish certain songs, and their posts were still removed by Google. Is this fair? [Slashdot]