Penn State students can no longer download free music from the Ruckus service, as the company unexpectedly shut down Friday.
Penn State spokesman Geoff Rushton said Sunday the university is currently looking into what occurred with the service.
"I don't believe we were notified," Rushton said. "Everybody's pretty unsure of what's happening at the moment."
He said he found out the service had stopped after receiving an e-mail message from a member of the university community addressing the shutdown.
Since the stop in service occurred over the weekend, Rushton said university administration has not discussed what comes next.
"We don't know what happened with Ruckus," he said. "We'll have to discuss that during the upcoming week."
Rushton added the university has not yet decided if it will provide a replacement music service.
A notice posted on Ruckus' Web site at about 5:30 p.m. Friday was brief in its explanation of the shutdown.
"Unfortunately the Ruckus service will no longer be provided. Thanks," the statement read.
The site also features six cartoon drawings: a cassette tape, two speakers, a record player, a pair of headphones and a CD case.
The service -- which allowed college students with a .edu e-mail address to download an unlimited amount of music to their computers -- replaced Penn State's four-year contract with Napster in 2007, according to Penn State Live.
Following the close, Ruckus' parent company TotalMusic announced its own shutdown Sunday, according to techcrunch.com and a blog post written by Jason Herskowitz, the company's vice president of product management.
Some students said Ruckus had been faltering even before the shutdown.
Carly Mallenbaum (sophomore-broadcast journalism) said she used to use Ruckus frequently, but it hadn't been working properly this year.
"Maybe it's good that it finally shut down," Mallenbaum said. "Now you don't have to waste your time.
She added she thought it was "inappropriate" for the company to shut down without giving notice.
Sasha Perez (sophomore-biobehavioral health) said the shutdown is "annoying," but "it's not like the end of my world or anything."
Perez also said she thinks more students might illegally download more music than they had before, and it isn't the university's obligation to find a replacement program.
