History of .MUSIC

The history of .MUSIC began in 2000 when Constantine Roussos was a student at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California (USC). These were the beginnings of what is now commonly-known as DotMusic and the .MUSIC community-based brand. Constantine had an assignment due to select a new company and industry to create a feasibility analysis and business plan for. Naturally Constantine gravitated towards his family business pertaining to real estate and handed the assignment to his business professor Bill Crookston. He looked at Constantine and shook his head. He told Constantine to step out of his comfort zone and write a plan on a topic that he was passionate about in a business that he would otherwise do for free. It was clear to him that it would be a music business plan: How to connect new music artists with fans, to showcase artist performances and musical works to music industry professionals and companies as well as to facilitate commerce online in a time of disarray and rampant peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy.

In context, 2000 and 2001 were the years that Napster turned the music industry upside down by facilitating piracy through P2P networks (Napster was eventually shutdown and but many copycats still exist today, such as Piratebay). The years 2001-2002 pre-dated Friendster, the first popular social networking site, and MySpace, the largest music social networking website of all time. In 2001 Constantine was awarded Top Business Plan for the business plan pertaining to a music social networking and commerce site he coined Unsigned Performer (UP) launched in 2001 (See http://web.archive.org/web/20011209161120/http://www.unsignedperformer.com/). Unfortunately it was a complete failure. Musicians were quick to sign up but music fans and industry professionals preferred to remain anonymous. There was no trust and keeping one’s identity private was the trend. Setting up personal profiles in 2001 with pictures and personal information was something considered taboo. In contrast today if you do not have a photo and personal description on your social networking profile it is considered off and highly suspect. Constantine’s failure was failing to understanding the significance of user behavior and psychology in a time where social networking was non-existent. At that time most people engaged online through forums behind a screen name. Personal information was rarely disclosed.

Constantine’s focus quickly turned to Affiliate Marketing and search engine optimization (SEO): How to rank famous brands and their products/services on Yahoo, MSN and a fairly new search engine called Google and be paid commission by selling their product. Back then the Affiliate market was fairly new and unsophisticated and it was Constantine’s first interaction with domain names when he realized that exact-match domains were easier to rank high in the search results than non-exact domains. Most brands would even allow affiliates to register domain names with their keywords in the domain or bid using their brand keywords in Pay Per Click advertising just as long as you were selling their product. This rule would later significantly change in the affiliate market since many affiliates – including Constantine – were so successful in affiliate marketing and SEO that affiliate sites started to outrank many of the brand websites.

This paved the way to the strategy of buying exact match “music.TLD” domains to serve a hugely underserved digital music market which was at its infancy and plagued by piracy. The goal was to build a brand behind the word “music” under exact-match “music.TLD” domains. Constantine’s first acquisitions were music.fm and music.us and over time they ranked significantly well in the search results for popular terms bringing in significant traffic and revenues. In 2003 Constantine’s company rebranded “UP” and called the brand “MUSIC” under music.us (See http://web.archive.org/web/20030323071259/https://music.us/) and music.fm (See http://web.archive.org/web/20030608081454/http://www.music.fm/) and in time became the largest domain owner of “MUSIC” brand domains on the Internet acquiring music.mobi, music.biz, music.co, music.mu, music.pro, music.tm, music.sm and others.

Constantine’s next objective became his pursuit to marry the “MUSIC” brand under a new brand “.MUSIC” in the relevant sector of domain names. This brand would be one based on a Top-Level Domain which followed the footsteps of both the safety and trust of .EDU and the community aspect of Facebook and Myspace. DotMusic’s public plans for a community-based .MUSIC gTLD were announced in 2008 along with a 5-year, ongoing communication campaign (See https://music.us/events.htm) for support of the community-based .MUSIC brand, which included extensive outreach, speaking engagements and sponsorships of leading events in the music and domain name space (See https://music.us/lro/trading-as-.music-sponsorships-in-commerce-relevant-sectors-examples.pdf)as well as significant press, media (including trade publications and mainstream media), social media, search engine optimization and online advertising (See https://music.us/lro/.music-social-popularity-pre-registrations-search-engine-rankings-and-ads.pdf), open and closed-door industry meetings and online/offline marketing activities.

In January 2009, DotMusic launched its .MUSIC Initiative petition to support a community-based effort with appropriate enhanced safeguards and multi-stakeholder governance. The music.us site was re-branded from “MUSIC” to “.MUSIC” which DotMusic trademarked in 2009 to protect all its ongoing branding efforts (See http://web.archive.org/web/20090202195521/https://music.us/). In the same month DotMusic also targeted Myspace, the world’s largest music social network to gain support for the .MUSIC Initiative community-based petition, an effort which focused exclusively on targeting millions of artists and included the “.MUSIC” support song which was had over 3 million plays (See https://myspace.com/musicextension/music/song/.music-www.music.us-by-constantine-60857670-66407408). The .MUSIC page became Myspace’s most popular profile amassing over 4 million artists in its Friends’ list (See http://myspace.com/musicextension). Coupled with DotMusic’s other social media and online/offline marketing efforts, the .MUSIC Initiative petition exceeded 1.5 million signatures in support of the .MUSIC community-based brand with multi-stakeholder governance and appropriate safeguard policies serving the music community.

The mission of the .MUSIC brand was to stand for something as opposed to be recognized as a commodity and an open brandless extension. Commoditization and genericness (i.e. standing for nothing except the novelty name of the extension) was the biggest problem that registrants and Internet users had with extensions such as .BIZ and .INFO that were launched to compete with .COM. They stood for nothing meaningful and their faceless brand was one of a generic, commoditized and descriptive nature alone. They had no differentiating factors to compete with .COM beyond the novelty of their extension’s name. Registrars would offer domain registrations under these extensions as alternatives to .COM i.e. they were treated a second-rate citizens in the domain space and as a “poor man’s” extension alternative if .COM was not available. The .MUSIC community-based brand was the exact opposite to this commoditized and generic approach that was highly prevalent in the domain space. The .MUSIC community-based brand would only be success if it was perceived by the relevant sectors as meaningful, trusted and highly differentiated, especially in comparison to .COM.

The .MUSIC community-based policies to serve the music community and increase trust, security and authenticity were based on the premise of Facebook’s killer strategy to dethrone Myspace, a seemingly impossible feat at that time especially given the millions of musicians on its site and the size of its social network. The most overlooked secret ingredient to Facebook’s success was no other than a top-level domain extension which was adopted by its relevant constituents as the trusted industry standard. It was branded, differentiated and stood for something meaningful by serving a purpose in a trusted, effective manner. Facebook would not be what it is today without leveraging two seemingly unrelated entities: the highly targeted, loyal and engaged U.S- based student body, and the .EDU trusted top-level domain that exclusively represents U.S- accredited educational institutions. To their detriment, Myspace did not verify members for authenticity. Its membership registration policy and process invited the proliferation of anonymous profiles, fake celebrity accounts and the common practice of unwelcome solicitation by bands continuously asking members to listen to their music and add them as “Friends” in their social network. This is akin to the dangers of open, music-themed gTLDs without any appropriate enhanced safeguards and multi-stakeholder governance, which would suffer from increased abuse and commoditization arising from its open generic nature. On the contrary, Facebook only allowed eligible U.S students to join. Facebook’s member registration eligibility policy was a disruptive killer tactic that harnessed trust, credibility and authentication. Since only U.S-accredited educational institutions could manage a .EDU domain, Facebook made sure all members were validated using their student .EDU email account. Facebook’s tactic was launching organically through student word of mouth and built credibility and trust within the Facebook social network.

The strategy was simple: Start with a niche student audience; then build a passionate and engaged following around exclusivity, authenticity and belonging to a highly targeted and engaged group; then expand globally by leveraging the network effect of those trusted individuals. Facebook leveraged the TLD network effect that the .EDU extension mobilized to perfection. This built the framework of .MUSIC policies and the .MUSIC brand: DotMusic’s community-based gTLD with more appropriate pro-active enhanced safeguards than any other Applicant, including a multi-stakeholder governance structure to instill consumer trust and copyright protection (See https://gtldcomment.icann.org/applicationcomment/commentdetails/11700). This was what the .MUSIC community-based brand stood for and extensively marketed as globally in its relevant sectors.

As part of its outreach efforts to gain support from a significant portion of the community, encompassing both commercial and non-commercial constituents DotMusic joined the American Association of Independent Music with Label Members including Beggars Group and Big Machine (representing top two global, best-selling music artists of 2012 Adele and Taylor Swift – See International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/dmr2013.pdf, Page 11) and Associate Members including, Apple iTunes (which accounts for 63% of global digital music market – See http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/16/apples-itunes-rules-digital-music-market-with-63-share). DotMusic also joined the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies with members including Government Ministries of Culture and Arts Councils from over 70 countries, and NARM with members accounting for about 90% of the music sold in the U.S. market, the world’s biggest music market.

DotMusic enjoyed significant branding and exposure from the media and was mentioned in media publications including Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, World Trademark Review, Forbes, New York Times, New York Post, Digital Music News, Hypebot as well as relevant domain –related media such as CircleID, DomainIncite, TheDomains, DomainNameWire and others. DotMusic also sponsored events, such as ICANN meetings ensuring all key stakeholders and leading companies in the relevant domain sectors, (such as registries, registrars and resellers), were made aware of .MUSIC community effort and to facilitate business relating to domain registrations and domain-related services. DotMusic’s sponsored .MUSIC brand was also featured alongside leading and globally-recognized brands, such as Google, Verisign, Afilias in relevant sectors and Comedy Central and Pepsi in non-related sectors (See https://music.us/lro/DotMusic_Global_Sponsorships_sm.pdf). DotMusic also sponsored SXSW, CMJ, Popkomm and other leading relevant conferences and events globally. The DotMusic executive team was also extensively involved in public speaking engagements in many of these leading conferences in both the domain and music relevant sectors to further the community-based effort and what the .MUSIC brand stood for (See https://music.us/events.htm). The .MUSIC network of MUSIC.TLD sites attracted millions of visitors (for example from April 2012 until March 2013 the site music.us alone generated 24.6 million pageviews – See https://music.us/lro/dotmusic-main-music-us-site-server-traffic-statistics-2006-2013.pdf) which was a significant feat, especially given that the relevant domain industry is such as small community. Twitter also recognized one of .MUSIC’s accounts (@mus) as a “highly sought user” in its “key interest area” (i.e. in its relevant sectors of domain-related services and music) and manually verified the account to avoid confusion and impersonation. Verified Twitter accounts are rare and are reserved for recognized Twitter users selected by Twitter itself. There are only 54,000 verified accounts out of over 550,000,000 active Twitter accounts (i.e. only 0.01% of accounts are verified).

In January 2011, Tina Dam, ICANN’s ex-Director for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) – who played a pivotal role in launching the historic new IDN ccTLDs (Country-Code Top-Level Domains) – joined .MUSIC as COO. Tina would play a leading role in forming the specifics of those enhanced safeguards and multi-stakeholder community-based approach for the .MUSIC community brand given her vast expertise in the domain space and her experience in writing and executing the implementation of IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process. In March 2011, DotMusic, given its successful community-based branding efforts for .MUSIC, the reputation of its team relating to the domain space and significant TLD-related inquiries from 3^rd-parties launched a .MUSIC subsidiary called MyTLD offering domain services and TLD consulting.

In February 2011, .MUSIC was featured on Billboard in an article Constantine authored called “How .music will save the industry” (http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1179256/constantine-roussos-guest-post-how-music-will-save-the-industry), where .MUSIC revealed its proprietarily-coined “.MUSIC-accredited Community Member Organization (MCMO)” policy based on verifying community members through recognized music organizations. The objective of mCMOs was to fulfill DotMusic’s efforts to:

• Meet ICANN’s Community Priority Evaluation threshold requiring support from a significant portion of the community in a clearly delineated manner relating to music. According to ICANN “Community” is defined as “meaning “fellowship” – while still implying more of cohesion than a mere commonality of interest” (See http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/string-contention-procedures-04jun12-en.pdf, Module 4-11). The Independent Objector reiterates this definition “as a group of individuals who have something in common” (http://www.independent-objector-newgtlds.org/english-version/the-issue-of-closed-generic-gtlds/). That common interest shared by the mCMO community is the “promotion and distribution of legal music”. “Delineation” relates to “clear and straight-forward” “membership of a community” (See http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/agb/string-contention-procedures-04jun12-en.pdf, Module 4-11). MCMO eligibility encompasses globally-recognized institutions with core activities and common interest relating to the promotion and distribution of legal music.
• Increase competition in the domain name space by creating a supplemental revenue source for mCMOs by facilitating mCMOs to offer a complementary product/service that does not exist in the community: a .MUSIC-branded domain. Since DotMusic’s branded .MUSIC domain is not a product/service offered in the music community and only competes within the domain industry, it is a true complementary product/service that would benefit the entire music community, increase competition in the domain space and not cannibalize any MCMO business since .MUSIC was a domain product not a music product competing in their space (emphasis added).

DotMusic engaged in countless discussions with leading music trade associations and recognized leaders in the space to fine-tune the .MUSIC community-based policies to match the needs of the music community within the framework provided by ICANN’s Applicant Guidebook rules. In November 2011, music industry veterans Robert Singerman and David Hazan joined the .MUSIC team to further DotMusic’s community-based support efforts.

DotMusic enhanced its Eligibility policies to allow legitimate global music community members to register, aligned its MCMO accreditation with its Mission and incorporated more appropriate enhanced safeguards than any other music-themed application. Safeguards include email and phone validation and identification, a strong Name Selection, Use, Content and Enforcement registration policy, a Globally-Protected Music Marks List and other pro-active safeguard policies that would protect the community while not hindering legitimate registrants the ability to easily register.

By 2012 DotMusic’s policies were completely finalized. DotMusic community-based effort accomplished a significant feat by the time the application was submitted to ICANN in March 2012. DotMusic built a strong and viable brand under .MUSIC gaining: the support of a significant portion of the music community that was all-inclusive of all legitimate music constituents (whether they were commercial or non-commercial constituents), overlapped with the majors, was strictly delineated and shared the common interest of “promotion and distribution of legal music.” These included: (i) the only recognized international federation representing arts councils and governments ministries of culture from over 70 countries (ii) digital music distributors accounting for the majority of all music distributed on legal music stores globally (iii) country-led music coalitions; (iv) international music export offices (v) the only recognized international association representing music information centers from 37 countries; (vi) one of the web’s largest online music community with over 3 million members; (vii) distributor associatedwith majors; (viii) leading distributor, with over 500,000,000 sales, distributes more music in one month than all major labels have combined in 100 years (ix) lyric provider associated with the content licensing of 2,000 music publishers, including all four majors: EMIMusic Publishing, Universal Music Publishing, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing ; (x) music social network (with 3m artists) and other large music community professional and non-professional social networks; (xi) largest online independent music distributor with 300k artists; (xii) music Coalitions from regions representing a significant portion of music business (France, Australia, Brazil and Canada); and others (See MCMOs at https://music.us/supporters.htm).

DotMusic, also represented and administered 11 community objections filed against music-themed applicants for .MUSIC, .SONG, .TUNES and .BAND with the International Chamber of Commerce (See http://www.iccwbo.org/products-and-services/arbitration-and-adr/expertise/icann-new-gtld-dispute-resolution/expert-determination/). Objections were of reasoned nature and aligned with the DotMusic Mission relating to protecting intellectual property and fighting piracy (i.e opposition to “open” music-themed strings lacking appropriate enhanced safeguards) and ensuring music-themed strings follow a multi-stakeholder approach and are not anti-competitive or exclude a significant portion of the community. For example, a Community Objection of reasoned nature was filed against the other .MUSIC community applicant, Far Further (.MUSIC LLC), since their policies mandate that they are the sole registrar (a clear violation of ICANN policies to provide non-discriminatory access to Registry Services to all ICANN-accredited registrars). More significantly their policies exclude a significant portion of the global music community from participating if they did not belong and have “current registration and verifiable membership in a global music community organization that was organized and in existence prior to 2007.”

In 2012 DotMusic became a member of the Community-based TLD Applicant Group (CTAG) (See http://thectag.org/) formed in 2012 to ensure that the collective interests and voices of community-based new TLD applicants and the community stakeholders they serve are heard and represented in ICANN’s New gTLD Program. DotMusic looks forward to serving the global music community in an all-inclusive and transparent manner, consistent with its Mission, Purpose and Values.