Music sector to make its mark online

An initiative hoping to establish a ‘.music’ generic top-level domain (gTLD) – the three letters that follow the dot in a web address – for the music sector has been making waves online and off. ‘.MUSIC’, led by Constantine Roussos and Tina Dam, co-founders of TLD management and consulting service MyTLD, has made a bid to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), during an application window which saw a total of eight parties pay the $185,000 fee to apply to operate the .music gTLD. If successful, .MUSIC will act as registry for any artist or organisation wishing to establish a domain with the .music suffix, and a .MUSIC Arts and Culture Fund will be set up with the assistance of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies (IFACCA), to distribute proceeds from domain name registration fees to select not-for-profit organisations. The initiative aims to create a unique identity for the online music community and to eliminate the dilemma faced by many artists and organisations when they are not able to pick the most appropriate domain for their website, as the address has already been taken. It is hoped the .music keyword extension will increase brand association and mean official websites will rank higher in search results. The .MUSIC initiative has already received more than 1.5 million signatures on a petition supporting its launch, amassed a social media following of 5 million and been welcomed by IFACCA as a non-government affiliate member. ICANN will now conduct an in-depth review to assess which applicants meet the operational and technical criteria required to manage a gTLD; the process is expected to take between nine months and two years.