• by September 24, 2004

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. In case you haven't heard, the world's biggest online auctioneer, eBay, plans to enter the online music market with PassAlong Networks. Music tracks will be sold on the eBay and PassAlong Web sites. Consumers will be able to use eBay's PayPal service to pay for purchasing music on PassAlong.

The online auction site is just the latest player to enter the music download space. Yahoo! recently acquired Musicmatch to help it get into the pay-per-download music business.

Interestingly, Sony this week said it's thinking about producing portable digital music devices that can play MP3 files. Sony's portable players have so far only supported its proprietary ATRAC format. And, for the last few years, Sony has flogged its MiniDisc format, which hasn't caught on in any significant way, at least in the U.S. Sony's turnabout seems to come as Apple's iPod and its iTunes Music Store continues on a tear in the music download space. Of course, the MP3 format is the dominant format in digital music downloading.

Right now, in order to play an MP3 file on a Sony music player, music fans have to use Sony software to convert tracks into the ATRAC format.