TechCrunch has a long post on TotalMusic, the major label-led digital music initiative that faded away after a DoJ antitrust investigation. Writer Erick Schonfeld received comments from several sources that point to a TotalMusic revival.

Multiple sources in the Web music industry (including two CEOs and another executive) have told us that the music labels are mulling over another attempt at creating their own digital distribution business, or at least one they can control. Details are sketchy, but the buzz is increasing around a project to create a free, advertising-supported streaming service that would be licensed or white-labeled to other Websites. Each stream would link directly to a paid digital download. Some believe that a revived TotalMusic and this project are one and the same.

Scholfeld found four people on LinkedIn who list TotalMusic as their employer. All four list Chicago as their home town. The EVP of Product Engineering, according to his LinkedIn profile, is Ted Ferguson, a former VP of Digital Product Strategy for Universal Music Group. And Scholfeld ran across a job posting for a software engineer. That job posting lists the company's headquarters as Herndon, Virginia.

One item not mentioned in the TechCrunch post is the connection to Ruckus. The website listed in the job posting: www.ruckusnetworks.com, the company provides a music and video service to university students. The contact given on the TotalMusic job posting is the Director of HR for Ruckus Network. And the Herndon address on the TotalMusic job posting is the same address given from Ruckus Network in the Ruckus end user license agreement.

The connections between the two companies is unknown, but it's clear the person in charge of HR for Ruckus is hiring for TotalMusic.

The job posting has this to say about TotalMusic:

TotalMusic, LLC is a new digital music platform offering the integration of music discovery, streaming and downloads into a wide variety of online and mobile environments. We have solid financial backing and a staff with decades of combined experience in online music.

While little is known about TotalMusic, more is known about Ruckus. The company, which counts Anschutz Investment Company as one of its backers, has a media industry-friendly business model that is packaged to help universities prevent digital piracy on their networks. It is a model not dissimilar to that of TotalMusic, which, from these few reports, appears to be an attempt to give consumers legal alternatives to the many unlicensed sites and services that exist.

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