Your band name is taken as a .com. Now what? Here is the practical version, including the part where one popular music extension costs six times what you are expecting.
The rules
- <strong>Try the .com first, always.</strong> It is what people type and what autocorrect assumes.
- <strong>No hyphens.</strong> Nobody types them and nobody says them out loud correctly from a stage.
- <strong>No numbers unless the number is in your name,</strong> and if it is, buy both spellings — the digit and the word.
- <strong>Short enough for a sticker</strong> and sayable in one breath into a microphone.
- <strong>Avoid the double letter trap.</strong> yourbandddesign has a problem you will hear about at every show.
What the extensions actually cost
| Extension | Roughly per year | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| .com | $10.44 at Cloudflare, $15.88 Namecheap, $21.99 GoDaddy | Cloudflare sells at cost with no markup |
| .band | From about $11 to register, around $21 to renew | Reads clearly, no explanation needed |
| .music | Premium pricing, varies widely by registrar | Check the renewal, not the first-year promo |
| .fm | About $68 to register and $68 to renew | The expensive one nobody warns you about |
That .fm number is not a typo. It is a country-code domain for Micronesia that the radio world made desirable, and it prices accordingly — roughly seven years of a .com, every year, forever. Plenty of bands still choose it. Just choose it knowing.
Always look at the renewal price rather than the registration price. A $2 first year followed by $40 renewals is a normal registrar move, and the renewal is the number you will pay for the rest of the band existence.
The four checks people skip
- Search the name first. If a band in another country has your exact name and ten years of results, you will be competing with them for your own name forever. Better to learn that before the shirts get printed.
- Check the socials at the same time. One name across your domain, Instagram and Bandcamp is worth more than a slightly better domain with three different handles behind it.
- Say it out loud to a stranger. If they have to ask how it is spelled, you will answer that question at every show for the life of the band.
- Do a basic trademark search. Free, five minutes, and it occasionally saves a rebrand.
The part that matters more than the name
Register it in an account the whole band can reach, with a card that is not going to expire, and turn on auto-renew and WHOIS privacy while you are in there. The most common way a band loses its domain is not a hijacking or a dispute. It is a dead credit card on a registrar account belonging to someone who left the band in 2023.
The domain is the only piece of your web presence that no platform can sell, reprice or shut down. Everything else on the internet you are renting. Own this one properly.
When the .com is genuinely gone
Sometimes the name is taken by a dormant page from 2011 and the owner wants four figures for it. You have better options than paying, and all of them beat the two things bands usually do, which are misspelling the name or bolting a number onto the end.
- <strong>Add a word that belongs.</strong> yourbandmusic.com, yourbandtheband.com, wearetheyourband.com. Ugly on paper, invisible in practice — people search your name, they do not type domains from memory.
- <strong>Take the .band.</strong> Cheap, obvious, and it says what the site is before anyone loads it.
- <strong>Add the city</strong> if your name is common. It helps the search you actually want to win, which is your name plus your city.
- <strong>Change the band name</strong> if you are early enough that only your friends know it. Nobody regrets this at year five; plenty of bands regret the alternative.
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