Since heavy metal group Metallica bumped Napster off the radar at the start of the new millennium, music-downloading sites have been scarce. Ruckus, one of the few music-downloading sites used generally by students in the residence halls, has also closed its doors in cyberspace.

Though the university extended no official business agreement with Ruckus, many students who pre-paid for a semester’s worth of downloads are curious to know what happens to their money.

Cindy Phillips, director of IT Customer Support and Telecommunications Services, said NIU had no notification that Ruckus would be shutting down.

“We found out that Ruckus was no longer providing its services from listers that we monitor,” Phillips said. “We use to have a formal agreement with the site when students had to pay to hold music in their libraries. When the downloads became free and customers were only required to provide payment to transfer their downloads to their MP3 players, we ended that agreement.”

Students who wished to transfer music downloads to their MP3 players were required to pay a fee of $19.95 per semester. Phillips said she has heard that Ruckus will be issuing credit to students who paid for an additional semester before the site closed.

Walter Czerniak, associate vice president for ITS, said they are still investigating the situation and evaluating additional options for students.

“For students that lost money we may try to assist them in obtaining refunds from Ruckus,” Czerniak said. “Services now are hard to come by. We recommend for the meantime that students utilize other retail services that will not be blocked by the university, such as iTunes.”

Freshman journalism major Hailey Kurth said although she paid no fees to Ruckus, she is disappointed that the site no longer exists.

“I’m mad that it got shut down because there are no other sites to use,” Kurth said. “A lot of people were using Ruckus; we know about iTunes, but I don’t want to pay.”

Junior history major Chris Dodge said he recommends students try a site by the name of iMeem.

“You can find pretty much everything on this site for no cost,” Dodge said. “You can keep the music in your library, and I am pretty sure you can transfer to an MP3, but I haven’t tried it.”