Digital Home Thoughts: Digital Music on eBay Australia. Whatever.

"EBAY Australia has laid down the gauntlet to Apple's iTunes Store, becoming the world's first eBay auction site to sell new digital songs alongside secondhand CDs. The digital tracks, sold in unrestricted MP3 format, undercut the price of the leading digital music store by offering songs 10 cents cheaper, at $1.59 and albums $1 cheaper, at $15.99 than the Apple alternative, The Courier-Mail reported."

According to this article, "eBay Australia has laid down the gauntlet to Apple's iTunes Store..." That's not what the press release says. This appears to be one of those stories written to pull in readers. Much ado about nothing. Kind of like those 11:00 News promos that entice you to stay up too late. You know the ones: "Tap Water: The Silent Killer!" Like those promos, this article leaves out quite a bit of relevant information.

The truth is eBay Australia isn't selling digital music. They've partnered with Universal Music to update their Music category page to feature links to Universal's own digital music store. It doesn't seem to go much beyond that. You can search eBay Australia or search GetMusic, but not both at the same time. For example, Taylor Swift's album was highlighed on the Music page, but searching for Taylor Swift on eBay Australia didn't bring up anything about digital downloads. It's not an auction. It's not BuyItNow. Tracks are purchased through Universal's site, which requires a separate login.

It's just not that big of a deal. In fact, I've spent too much time writing this. Stop reading... move on....