The article below about the band Oh No Fiasco and their experience with changing their band name because of poor search results is an important read for other bands. In the age of the internet you now NEED to consider your band name search results when picking the name. If you can’t be found on Google you pretty much don’t exist.
I encountered this problem first hand a few weeks ago. While at the Driven Music Conference I saw a band I really liked called Kids. When I got home I immediately hit Google to look for them. As I started to type Kids I knew the search results would not help. Then I thought maybe if I type Kids Music… lol, yeah that is not going to help either. Can you guess what their domain is? www.LongLivedTheKids.com. I only found it because I came across an ad for the band in the conference program. Without that ad I would have never found them. Lost fan connection.
If you have a name that is not found, has a poor domain name, you should think about changing your name now, before things get too far along. If I was in the Kids I would be changing my name now.
If you can’t come up with a band name that has a clear and easy domain available and will allow you to be returned with decent search results, pick another name.
KNOXVILLE — The membership of the band The Few had no idea when they chose the band’s name in 2009 that it was so ingrained as the moniker for the Marines that the band The Few was almost invisible on the Web.
“We were basically unfindable,” says vocalist Lindsey Stamey.
“Search for The Few and you’d get the Marines; search iTunes and it would be two other bands that broke up 10 years ago,” says bassist Thomas Boyd. “We knew we were going to have to change eventually, so better now than 10 years from now. It’s impossible not to find us now.”
Sitting in the Downtown Grill and Brewery on Gay Street, Stamey and Boyd say it was a tough decision to change the group’s name to Oh No Fiasco.
“I almost cried when we conceded it,” says Stamey.
via Oh No Fiasco stays faithful to the musical fight » Knoxville.com.
There’s something additionally bad about choosing a generic name that doesn’t have unique search results: finding out if your band got in the news. My old band had a really generic name, but I wanted to get Google Alerts whenever something new popped up about my band.
Since my band’s name was generic, I got a ton of results that had nothing to do with my band.
My new band has a unique name, and, now, all my Google Alerts are highly relevant.
I’m a music journalist so I have dealt with this topic before.If you know the song/album title or a band member name, sure it makes it easier.
The band name is a trademark covering a unique logotype, merch and many other significant marketing items just for an identification. If it’s generic regardless a language, it’s difficult (or very expensive) to legally trademark it. It doesn’t change anything to put The or A for the band name to give it a different meaning, to me.
There are on-line band name generators and as far as Google suggests, “indie” bands commonly use it.
A good band name should be original to be found and memorized easier but also short enough for the SEO use and so the domain name and all the social profile nicknames sounded short. One may think: “Oh well, I can use an URL shortener”. Yes you can but to look more professional, the domain name should be used without shortening. The good thing is that it was rather common to retype a web address right into a web browser in the 90s but these days it’s all about clicking and bookmarking.
If a band name consists of more than 2 words and spaces between, it’s already difficult to make up a name for a social profile (due to specific indexing engines). Twitter sounds the least attractive as it demands no more than 15 letters incl. digits for a profile name. If a social network domain name is a long one, a long band name – so that a long profile name makes it even more difficult. If the sites use folders (/user, /pages, /profile etc.) or no vanity URLs but numbers, then it’s useless for SEO and Google too. It’s funny though since Google native Google+ network still doesn’t offer any vanity URLs for profile names and links (there are external companies offering these).
Now, if there’s a big talk to allow for .music domain names then how would you make any SEO use of it, especially with a long band name? 😉
It often happens one band finally requests the other band to change its name, sent along with a lawsuit. Then if this other band has been active for a few years, it can loose whatever its members built under the name. It is only their fault because they haven’t done any deep research before setting up the band name. I don’t really know how it works with law requirements but sounds complicated at the first glance.
It doesn’t take much to create a good name (which should include the two matching words the best) but bands are either lazy or making their names when drunk 😉
There were a few bands which achieved success under difficult names like Eurythmics or Creedence Clearwater Revival and when it comes to typing – Marilyn Manson (often written as Marylin) or My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.
The successful examples of names turned into marketing items were Nine Inch Nails, Pitchshifter (especially with the album name the same as their website domain address) or KMFDM, at least around industrial rock style of music.
But there were also bands with very common names like Yes, A-ha, Garbage, Nirvana, Madness, or finally AC/DC 😉
One of the best SEO must have been done about the official website of Filter band (a generic name after all) since it’s been shown at the 1st place of Google search results for at least 2 years now.
I am not sure about changing a band name just to match it the Google search engine, because there are still Bing or Yahoo or Alexa after all. Changes may be cool if a band just started and it has no recognition yet but in case of established bands… Should they legally act under the new names with an additional description (“previously known as” f.e. “Stone Temple Pilots”? It’d make it less SEO-friendly 😉
To sum up, here’s an example for a multi use band name: http://www.last.fm/music/Nihil/+wiki
Thank you for a useful article 😉