USC Switches Legal Downloading Services

Most of the colleges that signed deals last year with music downloading services have decided to stick with those services for the coming year. But several institutions seem to have spent the summer playing a game of file-swapping musical chairs.

In August, American University decided to switch from Ruckus to Napster—because, campus officials said, students preferred Napster’s larger database of songs to Ruckus’s social-networking tools. But the University of Southern California has made the opposite move: After letting students sign up to use Napster last year, the university will now offer subscriptions to Ruckus instead.

For more on the file-sharing movers and shakers, see an article from The Chronicle by Brock Read.