eBay is conducting a 180-day pilot in the Music category with pre-approved sellers of downloadable digital music files. During the pilot, only pre-approved sellers will be able to list in eBay’s Digital Downloads category. After 180 days, eBay will evaluate the pilot and determine whether to enable other copyright owners or resellers of downloadable media to list in eBay’s Digital Downloads category if they meet certain criteria. Approved sellers in this pilot have represented to eBay that they are the rights owner or have contractual permission from the rights owner to resell the listed media. A buyer of downloadable media through eBay cannot re-list or resell the media on eBay. http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.shtml#2004-07-12154524

eBay said it will change the way the item description area of the view item page displays. The item description content will be now be cached by browsers, causing users to notice improvements in loading times when they view the same item more than once, or when they refresh a view item page. As a result of this change, sellers who have used html tags to customize the item page outside the item description area (to change font color for links outside the item description, for instance) will now only be able to customize the area within the item description. Any active listings, or listings that have been created in a listing tool such as Turbo Lister but not yet uploaded, will automatically be adjusted. http://www2.ebay.com:80/aw/marketing.shtml#2004-07-12105643

eBay rolled out its Unpaid Items process on Monday (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m07/i09/s00) and will host a workshop about it on Thursday, July 15th at 5:00 p.m. PT. http://digbig.com/4bjya

eBay will add options to search results so users can expand their search when using Item Specifics and keywords. If a search using Item Specifics returns fewer than 50 items, below the item results eBay will display a table showing different search expansion options. Each option will let expand the search by removing different keywords or item specifics combinations from the original search. http://pages.ebay.com/community/expanded_search_preview.html