Pick An Original Band Name Or Pay The Price: Meet AUTOPILOT
While picking a band name that's cool and interesting to fans is ideal, perhaps almost more important is selecting a name which hasn't been used already been used by other artists (past or present), and which doesn't defy any attempt to Google it. Here we look at the consequences of choosing an all-too-common moniker.
___________________________
Guest post from The New Rockstar Philosophy
It’s hard enough keeping a band together, motivated, co-ordinating schedules, studio time, gigs, and lest we forget making MUSIC. It’s hard enough doing all of those things and now, because you’re a masochist you pick an artist and/or band name that is unGooglable? If that is your “angle” then by all means go ahead but most working artists I know want THEIR NAME to come up when someone types it into Google.
Yes, Autopilot is a cool idea, a cool word, and clearly a universally loved band name because there are several Autopilot‘s still working today in some form or another. Add those to all of the Autopilot‘s that have existed over modern music history and you get a lot of Google indexing problems.
So what is a band to do? Suffering the consequences by SPENDING MORE MONEY than any band needs to. Lawyers, trademarks, court, filings, tons of bullshit (non-music) work that has to be done just so Autopilot, the band, can continue making music at a higher level.
Their lesson is for all: PICK AN ORIGINAL ARTIST / BAND NAME !!!
Your name just has to be your own. The fewer duplicates you can have out there the easier it will be for someone to see you, search you, find you, hear you. If you are using your own real name for your art projects then consider changing it to something better. Robert Zimmerman becomes Bob Dylan. Richard Starkey becomes Ringo Starr. You get the picture. Pick something original and cool. Or perhaps do a Ramones thing, Marky Ramone, Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone. Ultimately I am not here to give you band names, I’m here to warn you of screwing up a critical piece of the artist puzzle. Not that you’ll always know WTF you are doing when you start, but if you’re in any position to avoid it, then I strongly encourage you to pick an original artist name or suffer the consequences. Also if you are looking to change your band name here’s 5 tips for doing that.
-VOYNO-2K19
If your artist brand name is not unique, your music gets filed by automated algorithms at stores into some other artist’s profile. So on launch day, when potential fans hear your song/album on Spotify/iTunes/etc, and they click on your artist name, it’s some other artist’s profile that loads. You’ve given away your potential fans to some other artist who happened to get to that brand name and/or popularized it sufficiently before you did. That can hobble your fan base growth. It can take hours to days to correct automated errors. If there’s a Bush already, you gotta Bush X yourself.