The Nameify Blog

What’s in a name?

For a band, everything.

Your band’s name is simultaneously a trademark, a slogan, and a comment on the type of music you play.

‘Hot Sexy Swine’ isn’t going to play Christian rock. And ‘DethKlok’ isn’t going to do classic country gigs. (DethKlok, in case you haven’t heard, is the fictional heavy metal band featured in Metalocalypse, Cartoon Network’s late night satire show.)

As I write this, HotSexySwine.com is available if you want it, but DethKlok (and several other spellings) is not. None of the various spellings of DethKlok (DeathKlock, DeathKlok, DeathClock…) are currently ‘free’. And this brings up an interesting point about getting and protecting your band’s name. When you register your actual, trademarked (you did trademark your band’s name/logo, didn’t you?) name as a domain, you should register all the common misspellings you can think of at the same time. Just re-point those misspelled versions so they automatically link to your actual home domain. If you don’t, you might run into conflicts later on, when you (hopefully) go stellar.

What happens if someone already owns my band’s name as a domain?
It depends:

A case resolved several years ago (binding arbitration) demonstrates what can happen if you try to register a misspelling of an already commercial/trademarked name. John Zuccarini who was doing business as ‘Cupcake Confidential’ registered the domain name ‘DaveMathewsBand’. He got sued by the real Dave Matthews Band (note, the domain has one less ‘t’ than the correct name) for infringement. The judge ruled that the spellings were similar enough to cause confusion and the domain holder had to relinquish his ownership.

In this case, Cupcake Confidential may have misspelled on purpose just to get a saleable name, but the same thing can happen inadvertently. So, check out who CoolBeans.com might be if your band is called KoolBeans.

You probably won’t get sued if CoolBeans has nothing to do with music or another band, because the areas of commerce don’t overlap. But why take the chance?

Why shorter is better.
You can, just to get a unique name, do something like: HotSexySwineReallyRocksHard.com. But, that’s probably a mistake.

Remember, your website is going to be on T-shirts, business cards, and promo items. Shorter is better here. If you have some great lyric or song title that is memorable, you can take advantage of it by registering and linking from it to your main site, but don’t make it your main domain name.

Your site is going to promote your band with music samples, gig schedule, and bios for the band members. Keep it as short and as simple as you can. It’s much the same as when you chose your band name originally.

For domain resellers.
Simply adding the word ‘fans’ on the end of an existing domain name (HotSexySwineFans.com) should protect you from infringement issues. By adding ‘fans’- and keeping the site tasteful- there isn’t any confusion with the named band. As an example, DaveMatthewsBandFans.com is parked on GoDaddy and is used to sell tickets as an affiliate. There aren’t any infringement issues.

Get more great domains ideas from our list.

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