July 01, 2004

Mperia. So what is Mperia? The long version: Mperia is designed to let independent artists sell their work directly to their audience. We're also here to facilitate the independent music community, by allowing independent musicians and fans to connect together. The short version: We're here to damn The Man and fight the power.

via Warren Ellis's badsignal mailout: "It's an online music site that allows you to buy mp3s through BitPass micropayments. You get a full preview of each song on there through your mp3 software or (as I prefer) in a little Flash app. Mperia takes a bit off the top of each micropayment to run the site and the rest goes right to the artist. Why is Mperia a good idea? Because it creates a whole new economy for the artists who are locked out of the mainstream music industry. Indie music stores are disappearing, indie labels are disappearing, and America lives in a Clear Channel world. And Mperia puts the success of an artist directly into the hands of the audience."

posted by dng 20 years ago
  • Definitely looks like the beginnings of a great community. I bet it would be great in some time when they've had some time to grow. They do take 30% of the fee, so I don't think that the artists are ever going to really get rich. Seems like a lot of the artists I looked at had their songs set at $1. That seems like a bit much to me (considering ppl pay that for established artists in locked formats). .25 or .50 seems to be in the right neighbourhood to me.
  • I really hope that sites like this take off. * crosses fingers, buys a track or two *
  • Oh yeah, I meant to link to Clay Shirky's opinions about Micropayments and why they won't work. It's old, but intersting none the less.
  • They do take 30% of the fee, so I don't think that the artists are ever going to really get rich. Seems like a lot of the artists I looked at had their songs set at $1. I could be very wrong here, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that the average artist only gets somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 cents per CD released through a studio. Even if they're only getting 70% of the money from Mperia for every track, it seems to me that they'd be coming out ahead after selling only one song. Figure an average of ten tracks per album, that's seven bucks the artist takes away for every album's worth of songs downloaded. Of course, they might not get the same publicity, but it seems to me that that's mostly a question of these sites catching on.
  • Right, I never really expanded my thought about not getting rich. I was mainly saying that in the short term they're not going to be able to sell in any sort of volume to really have it as a money maker. I seriously doubt that many people are going to buy the complete album of an unknown artist for a dollar per track. Sure, some might pick and chose select tracks from an artist, but I doubt that many would buy all 10 tracks. That being said, there are tracks at lower prices as well. 70% of 0.25 really isn't a lot.
  • Ah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I'm hoping that these kinds of distribution models become the dominant force, though, as it seems that they're going to be quite a bit friendlier to those artists who aren't deemed Clear Channel-worthy. It'd be nice to see the internet promote artists the way that radio used to.
  • But if I like the whole album, I gotta say that I'd pay a dollar per track for it. It's still cheaper than buying through most of your big box stores, even factoring in the cost of blank CDs to burn. Unless of course you're talking about a 20-track album, in which case I'm probably going to get my ass to Best Buy.
  • Agreed.
  • And on here, you can listen to each track, so there's no need to buy rubbish filler. I haven't bought anything yet, but I've had good fun just listening to a bunch of random tracks on there.
  • Can't get past the flat out fucking stupid FAQ. Too much rhetoric for a simple online store. What they're doing isn't THAT revolutionary, really.