Never underestimate the value of a good name – this applies to domain names even more than it does to band names. The Internet is built on words, and words lead people to where they want to go (whether they know it or not).

There are a lot of websites where anyone can go and set up a profile for their band, post a few photos and some mp3s. This is well worth doing, but it isn’t enough. A MySpace page can be a very useful networking tool, but it shouldn’t be your main band page. You need to set yourself apart from the millions of other bands who also have MySpace pages; you need to show that you’re serious about what you’re doing (even if your music is all about having fun).

These are just some of the reasons why you need your own domain name, and why it should be easy to remember.

Is this name taken?

If you already have a band name, the first thing you should do is check to see if the .com has been registered by someone else. Unless you’ve got a particularly odd name, chances are the domain is already gone.

Type the name of your band (without spaces) into the address bar at the top of the browser, put a dot-com at the end, then hit return. If you arrive at a web page, then the domain has already been registered.

If you arrive at an error screen, then you might be in luck. However, this is not a guarantee that the domain is available. You can use a resource such as http://www.allwhois.com to see if it has any registration information for the domain.

You can also use any domain registration service to check availability of a given TLD (top-level domain – com, net, org, etc).

Registering A Domain – The Basics

The actual process of registering a domain name is very simple, although you will need a credit card. There are a huge number of domain registration services on the Web, and there isn’t very much difference between them in terms of quality of service. Apart from ensuring that they are actually a legitimate and accredited domain registration company, the main thing to look out for is price.

It may be handy to get your web hosting and domain name from the same company, and you may get a better deal by doing so. However, choosing a web hosting package is a more complicated issue, with other details to watch out for. For the moment we’ll just consider the registration process – I’ll create a separate post dealing with web hosting later on.

Here are a few well-known domain registration service providers:

• Godaddy.com
• Ipowerweb.com
• Yahoo.com
• Register365.com

There are many more, of course, so you can shop around to find the cheapest. You can register a domain for one year, two years, three years and perhaps more; the longer you register for, the better the deal usually is. If you’re serious about your band, then I recommend registering your domain for at least two years. Watch out for special introductory offers – you can sometimes get a ‘first-time registration’ discount.

Note: It’s not clear if the search engines take domain registration length into account when determining the trustworthiness of a website. If they don’t at the moment, they may well do in the near future. Because people who create spammy websites don’t intend to keep them for long, they tend to register the domains for one year. If you register yours for longer than the bare minimum, this might be one less flag raised with the search engines, and every little helps in this game.

My .Com is Gone – Should I Get A Different TLD?

If you find that ‘mybandname.com’ has already been taken, you need to decide whether to stick with your band name or try something different.

If you are a reasonably well-established band with a lot of loyal fans, you might prefer to keep your current name. In that case, you should try to get the .net top-level domain instead.

Even if you do get the dot com extension, you should also try to get the domain for your country of origin. For example, the .ie extension is for Ireland, and is highly trusted by the search engines because only someone with a genuine connection to Ireland is allowed to register one. The Norwegian TLD .no is similarly trusted. A .co.uk, .us, or .de will work nicely, although their registration policies are somewhat less restricted.

If you are a brand new band without any fanbase, and your dot com domain is taken, I would recommend coming up with a new band name. After all, you probably want to be as original as possible, and if the dot com is gone that means someone else thought of that phrase already (although it may not be in a musical context). Owning the dot com domain for your bandname is very important, so you should at least consider changing to a name you can be in pole position for.

I’ve written another post that provides some tips on using the Internet to help you choose a new band name.

Why Is DotCom So Important?

The .com extension is still seen by most people as the default for the Web. As such, dot com sites tend to get a lot of ‘type-in traffic’.

For example, when someone is looking for ‘bass strings’, they might type in ‘bassstrings.com’, even though they don’t know if such a site exists. It is also common for people to type searches into their URL bar – the browser will usually take them directly to the .com for the phrase they typed in.

For a band, you can probably see where this is going. If someone hears about you and wants to find out more, the first thing they will do is visit ‘yourbandname.com’. If this turns out to be a site about plumbing valves, your potential fan may be somewhat disillusioned.

Also, it’s easier to get someone to remember ‘yourbandname.com’ rather than some unusually formatted variant. It may be hard enough to get people to remember your band name in the first place – anything you can do to make it easier for fans (or clients) to find you is well worth the effort.