And the online digital music market continues to churn like the stomach of a man who just invented the Beer, Twinkies, and Soft Taco Smoothie. The Apple-vs.-Apple speculation continues to run rampant, with faithful viewer mrmgraphics noting that all this talk about a monster-sized settlement has some people figuring that the Beatles will become "major shareholders" in Apple and that Paul McCartney might even wind up on Apple's board of directors. Meanwhile, RealNetworks's Rob "I Swear I Am A Man of the People" Glaser is spouting off to nerds about freedom of choice over at Slashdot; feel free to wander in there if you don't mind getting lost for a couple of days. And as usual, other companies are still scrambling to line up for an iTMS courtesy kick to the head.

The latest soon-to-be-victim? Just say Yahoo! Faithful viewer Hatchet noted that, according to CNET, the Internet portal thingy is about to shell out $160 million in cash to buy MusicMatch, one of those services that keeps falling under our radar, partially because it's not Mac-compatible (duh), but mostly because we hear about it so rarely, we can only assume that it's not exactly kicking kiester out there. Also, while it does sell individual songs and albums, MusicMatch seems to put a real emphasis on its subscription service, which is another reason its name hasn't been as visible in stories about the Download Wars.

Anyway, Yahoo! says that it's "committed to being a major player in digital music," hence the MusicMatch merger. The company had already bought Launch a few years back, but that's apparently a streaming-only service, and Yahoo! is all gung-ho and foamy to get into the whole download thing, too, so that it can mix it up with the big dogs in what the BBC actually referred to as-- get this-- "the highly lucrative digital music market." (When faithful viewer iain sent us that we just about giggled ourselves into an aneurysm.) If Yahoo! wants MusicMatch to compete, though, it may need to rely on more than its sizeable audience of eyeballs-- er, eardrums-- to make it happen; MusicMatch's songs are 99 cents each on top of a $10 monthly subscription fee, making it one of the most expensive options floating around out there right now. But we're sure they'll get it all hammered out in the coming months.

Of course, speaking of "hammered," you really have to wonder what sort of mentality it takes to invest $160 million to buy your way into a market that seems to be break-even at best, and in which the competition is all packing switchblades and giving each other the hairy eyeball. This is a rough crowd, and the weak get weeded out pretty quickly. (Remember BuyMusic.com? No, neither do we.) So we have to wonder what Yahoo!'s been drinking to want in to this particular party. Buy hey, you know what? The more the merrier. We're sure Apple won't mind putting its boot upside one more cranium just for the sake of community. For it's own sake, here's hoping that Yahoo! doesn't sober up first.