Brand Your Music With An Innovative Domain Name

Ever since the days of Myspace, artists and musicians have known that leveraging their presence in the digital space can lead to greater success. Using social media and the internet to strategically build your brand helps fans find you. Beyond that, it boosts your credibility with venues and, these days, even the labels.

Many artists know social media is a powerful way to connect with fans, but training them to go to another website like Facebook to find you isn’t necessarily the best long-term strategy. It makes more sense to steer your fans to an online address that you control.

Having your own website still allows your fans to engage with your music via your various social channels through links to (and feeds from) those accounts, but it also provides direct access to your music, videos, tour dates, merchandise, and other information. With your own website, you can leverage all the latest and greatest platforms without being beholden to them or without having to change where you send your fans if, like Myspace, a once popular community should lose its luster.

One of the keys to growing an online community is making it easy for your fans to find you — a domain name that’s meaningful and memorable goes a long way in doing so.

But with more than 114 million registered .com domain names out there, you’ve probably already realized that finding your band’s name (or an original one) is not so easy.

What a lot of artists are beginning to realize is that there are now hundreds of possible domain extensions that can help your band’s brand stand out, including several that are particularly fitting for the music industry.

Follow Fiddy’s Example

You probably know the rapper 50 Cent best for his iconic song “In Da Club.” In May of 2014, he established http://www.50inda.club as a fan site and social portal.

Now, his fans can easily find his content and connect with each other. Shortly after Fiddy joined the .club, singer Demi Lovato launched her new official fan club at www.Lovato.club.

In addition to .club, other music-friendly domain extensions include options like .rocks, .band, .live, audio, .studio, .tickets, and even .guitars. These new unique domain extensions are so popular, in fact, that eight different companies (including Google and Amazon) are currently competing for the rights to .music.

The Keston Cobblers Club is another band that recently registered a .club domain name. Drummer Harry Stasinopoulos’ explanation for the switch is a testament to the power of the perfect domain name:

“Our name, Keston Cobblers Club, is rooted in old folklore about a flat-broke cobbler from Keston who brought people together with his lively musical performances, making everyone dance till their heels wore out. The .club domain gives us the opportunity to make our journey feel as inclusive as possible to everyone we meet along the way and highlights that all are welcome!”

Choosing Just the Perfect Domain Extension

By definition, artists want to stand out from the crowd and gain the attention they need to spread their music far and wide. Having a domain extension that says something about who you are is a great way to do that.

If you are a band, you can make it obvious with a .band domain. The band Acadian uses www.Acadian.band, and Sonic Boom makes a statement with www.SonicBoom.rocks.

Demi Lovato’s .club is a paid fan club, allowing her fans exclusive access. If you want to connect more broadly with fans, a .club social portal like 50 Cent’s may make more sense.

Artists and musicians are often pop-culture trendsetters, and the music industry is quickly adopting a wide range of new domains. While not specifically music-related, Lady Gaga uses the new domain .foundation for her Born This Way charity site (www.BornThisWay.Foundation.)

The key to picking a great extension is to make sure it’s easily identifiable. In the crowded music space, it needs to catch the eyes and stick in the minds of current and potential fans on concert posters, press kits, T-shirts, bumper stickers, CD and album covers, marketing materials, and in search results.

Remember: Facebook, Bandcamp, Twitter, and Instagram are not websites; they are platforms. You can’t control what happens on those platforms, but you can control every aspect of your own professional, easy-to-navigate website. If you’re not ready to commit to your own site yet, you can still use a great domain name to point to your page on a platform, making it easy for your fans to find you without searching and giving you the control to change where the domain points in the future. See how reggae rapper Matisyahu uses www.Matisyahu.club to drive fans to his page at the DreamPatron platform.

It’s hard to nail down a specific return on your investment in a unique domain extension. But as an artist, you are an innovator and a trendsetter at heart. And grabbing a new domain extension that exemplifies your brand is not only smart marketing, but it’s also an avenue to place you at the cutting edge of online branding — right where an artist should be.

With nearly 20 years of experience in the Internet and mobile spaces, Jeff Sass is the CMO of .CLUB Domains, LLC, operator of the new top-level domain .CLUB, which is ideal for clubs, associations, teams, loyalty programs, fan clubs, and anyone with a passion interested in a memorable, descriptive domain name. As a self-proclaimed gadget geek, early adopter, and experienced entertainment and technology executive, Jeff’s career thus far has spanned the worlds of traditional film and television, along with computer games and mobile technology. Jeff writes about marketing, mobile, social, startups, and digital media/content creation. Jeff is an avid social media enthusiast who podcasts and writes for several blogs. He is a regular speaker at conferences, events, and schools on topics ranging from social media to domains to entrepreneurship.

Brand Your Music With An Innovative Domain Name