Passport Designs was a leading and pioneering developer of music composing software, originally founded in the mid nineteen-eighties, and the authors of such brand-leading products as "Mastertracks Pro" (favourite of the Human League amongst others), "Encore" (used by Oscar Peterson and many other jazz musicians), and the chart-topping "MusicTime". Originally based in Half Moon Bay, just south of Silicon Valley, they moved to Foster City, CA in the year following music@passport's release.

Passport had ambitions to lead the way in the area of music publishing on the net. The company's software users were already using Passport products to compose and print out music, the next logical step was to allow them to harness the power of the internet to gain wider recognition for their works.

"music@passport" was a score-based composing program with two novel features. Firstly, it contained pitch recognition software and a bundled microphone, so that if you didn't play a musical instrument, you could sing your pieces into the computer. But most importantly, the new software linked into a new dedicated website for music@passport users, which allowed them to upload their new compositions, and to search for, download, print out, and even vote on each other's pieces. This was obviously quite an advanced requirement, not the least because large parts of the website were only to be accessible to registered users.

Richard Fincher was engaged to write the CGI scripts for this web site in 1996. As well as producing the web version of the site (to which several hundred user scores were uploaded), the project also included a special demo version of the site which was used to present the products capabilities to the world markets at the 1997 NAMM show in Anaheim California - which Richard attended. He also took part in the UK marketing of the product.

It was the momentum gained from this project, along with that of REO Speedwagon, that lead to the formation of Room101 Limited in January 1998. Unfortunately, Passport Designs Inc were liquidated in 1998, due mainly to the knock-on effect of their product fulfillment company's financial difficulties. Their products were subsequently acquired and rebranded by G-VOX. Inc.