MUSIC Portal allows artists to sell downloads

Indie musicians can set their own prices and access a wider audience.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Some people read newspapers or write e-mail while commuting to work. William F. Walker brings along a portable keyboard and composes music as he rides the train to his day job in Belmont.
Walker performs with a five-piece, Brazilian-influenced jazz ensemble, Nossa Bossa. And his train compositions offer a creative outlet for his other passion: techno-electronic music.
"It's been in my mind on occasion to ponder, 'How the heck am I ever going to get an audience for this?'" said Walker, who lives in Santa Clara, Calif.
Enter Mperia, an online music portal where independent musicians such as Walker can build a fan base and sell their songs. Think of it as an iTunes music store for unsigned acts. Since its trial launch in February, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based service has attracted about 700 acts, offering about 2,000 songs for sale online. Some tracks sell for as little as a penny.
Creators
Mperia is the musical love child of a pair of Stanford University doctoral candidates, Kurt Huang and Joshua Ellis. Intrigued by the supernova that was Napster, the duo wanted to re-create its powerful online music community -- without ripping off artists in the process.
Sure, Apple beat them to it. But like some of its predecessors on the indie music scene -- notably The Orchard, which claims to be the largest distributor of non-major-label music -- Mperia represents a milestone in the evolution of online music.
"It's absolutely a portend of the future," said Mike McGuire, research director for research firm GartnerG2 in San Jose, Calif. "It's an online portal. A destination that is not controlled by a large corporate entity, that is dedicated to providing an avenue for letting artists and consumers determine popularity."
In short: It's a place where garage bands can connect with their fans. And it's an affordable marketplace, where bands can sell their tracks. Established online retailers, such as Amazon.com, often charge bands an up-front fee before they'll sell a music CD. Not so with Mperia.
"At risk of over-generalizing, it seems like a lot of these outfits only make economic sense if you're selling a lot of volume," said Walker, who considered selling CDs through Amazon.com.
At Mperia, artists upload tracks, set the song prices and keep 70 percent of the proceeds. Mperia handles payment processing through its parent company, BitPass of Palo Alto.
"It's a vision for how independent music can be distributed for the benefit of everyone," said Huang.