Although the mix tape concept is very much alive in the digital age, what with MP3s, iTunes and CD burners, one company wants to be your mix provider. Or more exactly, it wants to be your mix tape enabler by providing you with a music library, distribution platform and maybe even a slice of the income pie.

Mixaloo is all about bringing the mix tape into the digital age. Or, as Mixaloo CEO Mark Stutzman told Pollstar, “It’s an activity that a lot of us spent our youth on, putting together mix tapes for all kinds of reasons. But the real motivation is all about sharing who you are through music. And the people who matter to you.”

Music definitely matters to Mixaloo co-founders Stutzman and Mark Peabody, the company’s VP of Business Development. Stutzman, who is a drummer, was CEO and founder of interactive services firm Digital Variant and was chief technology officer of Bolt.com, one of the first teen-oriented social Web sites. Partner Peabody was also at Bolt.com where he served as VP of business development. Before Bolt, Peabody was a senior analyst with technology and marketing company the Aberdeen Group.

With Mixaloo, music fans choose songs from the company’s library, which includes content from all four major labels as well as hundreds of indie imprints, assemble a mix and distribute the finished mix via e-mail, blogs or Web site postings where it appears as a collection of 30-second samples.

But creating and distributing the mix is only half the fun. People who receive the mix or see the mix posted somewhere on the Web can then purchase the mix, with songs averaging about 99 cents per.

“We make it extremely simple to promote your mixes to any of the major social networks or your own personal blog or your home page or wherever you want it to be,” Stutzman said. “Then we also provide the users the opportunity to earn cash. That means every time someone comes across the mix tape on a page, and says, ‘I love this mix, I want to buy it,’ the user who actually created the mix splits the profit with Mixaloo.”

In addition to earning some cash by selling their Mixaloo mixes, users can also earn points that can be exchanged for merchandise through the Mixaloo Web site.

But aside from Mixaloo splitting the profits with its users, the company is also promoting a grass-roots viral strategy for marketing music. After peer-to-peer illicit file-trading, one of the major online copyright problems facing the recording industry is the unauthorized use of tracks on Web sites, music blogs and social networking environments like MySpace.

Although many such sites are actually promoting music, oftentimes the record labels see it as more copyright infringements needing to be shut down. But Mixaloo makes such situations legal.

“Folks are taking full tracks that they absolutely have no rights to and promoting them on their sites,” Stutzman said. “They’re getting themselves in the cross hairs of the major labels. Mixaloo is a 100 percent legal alternative to that.”

What does one see when encountering a Mixaloo mix?

First there’s the user-selected title and custom artwork. Mix authors can upload their own pictures to associate with the mix. Then there’s the mix itself – 30-second samples of 15 tracks or more. By using the Mixaloo widget, viewers can then purchase the mix.

But more importantly, if a mix grabs someone’s attention, he or she can send that mix to a friend, no matter if it’s the original mix with 30-second samples or a purchased mix with the complete songs. It’s this viral marketing aspect of Mixaloo, where music fans distribute the Mixaloo mix to other music fans, that shows so much promise.

“What’s exciting to us about this is that it really opens up a distribution channel for the labels, and it creates this kind of vast, one-to-one promotional opportunity for the labels to reach the individual with their music,” Stutzman said. “It’s really the fans of the music. The ones who are the most passionate about the music they listen to, become the resellers of that music. And there’s no one better to recommend music to their friends.”

Many Web ventures might take more than a year from that initial “eureka” moment to the day they hang out their digital shingle. But Mixaloo has navigated the fast track almost from the moment of conception. Conceived just more than a year ago, Mixaloo began beta testing about seven weeks ago and will officially launch in mid November. Fast growth for fast times.

“It’s an entirely new distribution model that really empowers the users to get that music out there and sell it themselves,” Stutzman said. “The most passionate users, the most fans of the music they consume, and they’re communicating the best way possible via this social landscape. Not only are the fans who are the most passionate promoting the music, but they’re promoting it in a way where all of the folks who are looking to consume music are at the right place at the right time.”