A digital music start-up appeared to gain more confidence in its business model yesterday, raising the anticipated share price for its planned initial public offering of stock.

Sacramento-based Digital Music Group, which owns rights to oldies, rarities, and out-of-print recordings and sells them through digital music services, upped the price to $9 to $11 per share from $8 to $10 per share.

That upped the sum the company would raise in such an offering if all shares are sold to $46.8 million from about $33 million.

It is still unclear when the offering will occur. Digital Music Group plans to sell 3.7 million shares, and underwriters I-Bankers Securities Inc. and FTN Midwest Securities Corp. would have an option to buy an additional 555,000 shares. The company would have an estimated 8.4 million shares and be traded under the ticker symbol DMGI on the Nasdaq market.

In its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has said it is well positioned to acquire the digital rights of music from independent labels, digitize the recordings, and sell them through iTunes and other popular download services like RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo! Music Unlimited. iTunes accounts for 88 percent of the company's total revenue to date.

The company has rights to sell more than 200,000 music recordings in digital format, and has 36,000 recordings currently for sale through download services. Its top 50 sales list included artists like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Bobby Rydell.

In the filing, the company cited market research indicating that worldwide shipments of portable digital music players are projected to grow 370 percent over the next five years, from 26.4 million units shipped in 2004 to 124 million units in 2009.

Digital Music Group was founded in April 2005 by Mitchell Koulouris, a former Tower Records executive, and his brother Peter, a lawyer.