According to a press release out this morning, the domain name Music.com is up for sale exclusively with DomainAdvisors.com
Beyond being in what is in my opinion one of the top 10 generic .com domain names, there are 8 applicants for the new gTLD .Music, including Google and Amazon.
According to the press release , Music.com gets “approximately One Million visits per month”.
Here is what Google had to say about Music in its application for the new gTLD .Music:
There is a significant audience for music on the Internet, as supported by industry data: over 10 billion songs have been downloaded on iTunes since its launch in 2001; Pandora total listener hours were approximately 2.1 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 and total global digital music sales were $5B in 2011.
The sale was announced by Jeff Gabriel President of DomainAdvisors.com who sold the domain name Sex.com for a record setting price of $13 Million in 2009.
There is no reason why Music should not break that record in my opinion especially considering all the extra traffic Music.com is set to receive once .music TLD is delegated to the root.
Here is the press release:
“DomainAdvisors is very excited to announce that Music.com, arguably one of the world’s most valuable domain names, is being privately marketed for sale.”
“The Music.com domain name stands alone in terms of caliber, depth and scope, truly encompassing the multi-billion dollar music industry. Rarely does a domain offer such huge potential to dominate any online space – let alone the online music space – and will likely only appreciate in value over time.”
“Highly marketable, memorable, and category defining, Music.com offers a unique global branding opportunity for a new or established company to capitalize on a universally recognized word included in nearly 300 Million Google searches each month.”
“Music.com remains an unspoiled brand that currently attracts approximately One Million visits per month. ”
“Notable music industry stats include:
Amount of money spent on Music Downloads last year: $5.2 Billion
Number of songs downloaded in 2011: 3.6 Billion
Online Music industry growth compared 2010: 17%
Number of Subscribers to online music services: 13.5 Million
Percentage growth of online music services: 65%
Most downloaded song in 2011: “Just The Way You Are” by Bruno Mars with 12.5 Million downloads
According to DomainAdvisors’ President, Jeffrey Gabriel, “There are only a handful of domains in the world that dominate the largest and most competitive online industries and Music.com is one of them. Music.com is of the same caliber of Insurance.com, Weather.com or even Sex.com which sold for 13,000,000 USD.”
“Jeffrey Gabriel sold Sex.com in 2009.”
For more information on the Music.com property, please write to Jeff@DomainAdvisors.com
Absolutely one of the very best domains in the world.
Should EASILY set a new record.
Could be TENS of millions.
No, Rick, this domain won’t sell for “TENS of millions”…it won’t even sell for $10 million. I don’t see them getting an offer over $5 million (although $5 million IS alot of money).
The extreme high-end of the domain aftermarket was and is, the most affected by the gTLD program.
Well, I disagree and I guess we will find out in the weeks and months ahead.
I don’t look at it as a domain name. I look at it as something much bigger and grander in the right hands.
Highest and best use.
I have no involvement in this sale whatsoever. Just expressing a personal opinion.
This IS one of the most valuable domains that has ever been up for sale at this stage of the game.
Well I certainly expect that the new gTLD .Music will sell for over $10 million and wouldn’t be shocked to see it go well over $25 Million
@VegasPirate44
I guess it depends on one’s perspective, but $5 million isn’t really a ‘lot’ of money, especially for a domain name that represents a high-profile, multi-billion dollar industry. I won’t make a prediction on this one, as it could vary widely depending on the interested parties, but if it were only to go for $5 million, that would be tantamount to robbery.
shouldn’t the interested parties for .music turn their attention to this offering?
I think the offering timing is impeccable.
I foresee a relatively fast sale (3-12 months most likely with an NDA)
Definitely one of the best domain names in the world. It should go for a helluva lot more than 5 million dollars. Much more. It’s the best domain in a multi-billion dollar industry.
Usually, one can’t help but scoff at the sorts of ‘price estimations’ we see for various seven/eight figure domains, originating from middle aged basement dwellers who couldn’t muster a liquid two thousand dollars even if they pawned the title for their 1995 Civic. In this case, though, I’m inclined to agree that this one’s mega.
It’s just a matter of how its current owner wants to play his hand.
Does he have the stones to hold out for top-top price- valued on the basis of what it might be worth to a company like aapl- in the midst of big potential changes on the horizon (pretty unlikely, given the timing of this sale), or does he sell to the first spry buckaroo who can cobble up a high seven figure ‘investment group’ and try his hand as the worlds most bad-ass iTunes affiliate?
Interesting times we live in, for sure.
FYI, I was the owner and seller of Sex.com but I appreciate the brokers selling it to someone I introduced them to. I was also losing bidder way back when on Music.com at like 8M, I think AOL beat us on auction at 10M at the time. Worth around 6-8 still today if you ax me.
If there were no site there I think weather.com would be the best raw name in the world, restaurants.com is up there too but too many variations. I sold menus.com for 25K and entered the domain business the next day.
It’s worth more than 5 million. Sell it to Kim Dot com so he can use it for his new site.
Finally Apple, Google, or Microsoft have something to go after with their billion dollar war chests. Music.com would help Apple maintain their itunes enclosure, or it would give Google or Microsoft (or a newcomer) an edge if they want to break into the online music selling business.
What is more interesting than the price it will go for, is who will see the value in this generic domain name and compete for it. Or will the big name companies just pass this opportunity up?
Remember Candy.com was sold to a relatively unknown company, and not Hershey, Nestle, JellyBelly, etc.
There’s a rumor that Apple is working on a streaming service like Pandora. This domain would be perfect fit for it.
I think many here have the illusion that traffic translates to money in regards to music sites that are legal. Big companies promote their brands not generics. So even if music.com benefits from .music “leaked” traffic it does not mean that they will financially gain from it. Has Sex.com ever made significant money?
The legal digital music space is cluttered and is ultra competitive and with small margins. All the legal music stores pretty much offer the same exact content with no differentiation. Licensing costs for Pandora and Spotify are really high and yes they are still working on getting a profit.
Just because the term “music” gets a lot of views and is popular does not mean it is the most profitable and can convert. Does leaked traffic from .MUSIC even matter if you can not make a significant amount of money through it? Our music.us site gets about a million visitors a month too. We have collected over a million emails who signed our .music support petition over the last few years but in terms of monetization that is a stretch to assume that music-related traffic makes as much money as keywords related to insurance or legal. Search for the term “music” and see how many Google ads there are. From my computer there is zero. Why? The conversions are not there in terms of digital music. You sell a song for $0.99, the artist gets a portion and then deduct your costs. Profit = Revenue – Costs. Who is crazy to advertise for such a low converting keyword unless they are trying to build a brand. Then again branding a generic .COM has always been hard and does not give the benefits of fancy brandy brand names. There is a trade-off: traffic vs. stronger branding. Usually when a brand becomes well known then the traffic follows. In the end it is all about value generation that translates to profits not losses.
In regards to Megaupload and other “pirated” sites it is important to mention that the majority of their profits comes from 2 sources: ads from established players that we consider household names (In order for the site to publish advertising, the site must have a deal with an adserving company. Think parking pages and you can figure out who provides these feeds) and subscriptions (for example Fileserve charges $10 a month for unlimited downloads and maximum download speed). Those subscriptions for access to pirated content and faster downloading speeds are primarily sold by affiliate pirates. These cyberlockers – from Filesonic, Mediafire, Fileshare, Megashares – entice users to join their affiliate “pyramid schemes” and yes traffic converts to a lot of money in terms of subscription profits and ad profits. Uploaders also earn rewards, for example $35 for 1000 uploads. One problem: it is piracy.
So since we are on the discussion of music.com please let me know what the business model should be? $0.99 downloads? Streaming with such high licensing costs? Videos and lyrics (music.com tried that).
Fantastic domain though. I have inquired to buy it in the past. From a business perspective it is all about ROI unless you have money to throw around for a fantastic vanity domain. There is always a right price that someone would pay, including myself. But the numbers thrown by people here make no sense given the competitiveness factor, the piracy factor, the lack of ability to differentiate from competition given the licensing cost factor and the lack of willingness for most music fans to pay for music. I wish it were the opposite and that is the goal of .music. To increase willingness to pay and create a safe haven for music consumption. No-one said it would be easy though.
Would love to hear from people who can give me a strong, legal business model for music.com that does not exist today and is hard to replicate. A great domain can not accomplish anything without a business model with an ROI. Unless the goal is to just buy and sell domains and never develop them.
The writing is on the wall though for music.com. Google is changing their algorithm (author rank algorithm) and these types of exact match domains will be losing their search ranking without the necessary engagement from users and the appropriate links from trusted 3rd party music sites. I think it is the best time for them to sell. Great decision. Those who think .COMs will have more value are in for a surprise.
The writing is on the wall. Look at the data on the sales of .COM domains over the years. Big data leads to predictive and persistent conclusions about the future. Big .COM sales have decreased. Pointing out to a 2009 sale of sex.com as a way to persuade someone to spend millions of dollars is not very convincing. It is 2012 today.
With parking pages losing their attractiveness and Google/Bing relegating exact match domains without the appropriate Pagerank and new algorithm that will evolve into a more author ranking (check Google’s Agent Rank patent: “identity of individual agents responsible for content can be used to influence search ratings. Assuming that a given agent has a high reputational score, representing an established reputation for authoring valuable content, then additional content authored and signed by that agent will be promoted relative to unsigned content or content from less reputable agents in search results”).
Will certainly be an interesting development to watch.
Constantine Roussos
.MUSIC
http://music.us
http://twitter.com/mus
Constantine
Thanks for weighting in.
I think one of the reasons for the lack of BIG domain sales is that there haven’t been too many domains like sex.com or music.com on the market.
A lot of the best possible generic domains in the world are gone.
Insurance.com was bought by QuinStreet, others like Hotels.com, Travel.com, Cars.com are long gone.
You need a $10M + domain on the market for it to sell
Music.com has that potential
Sale.com which we have over at Rightofthedot.com is a domain that can fetch a big dollars as well
By the way since you asked yes Sex.com did at one time make a lot of money.
Six figures a month++
“”So even if music.com benefits from .music “leaked” traffic””
Its not a theory its a certainty
Just look at the traffic on xxx.com after .XXX launched, traffic more than doubled.
Monetizing a traffic as you say is the key.
Kim Dot Com seems to have done pretty well with it and now from some accounts just out today the case against him is falling apart and the Prime Minster of New Zealand even apologized to him today:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57521208-93/new-zealand-pm-apologizes-to-kim-dotcom-case-unraveling/
This comment is not directed to you personally
If you get millions of visitors a month and can’t figure out a way to make money on that traffic shame on you.
See you in a few weeks at ICANN
Best
mus: what you fail to see is that Music.com its an instant Brand (period)
Only an “ill- informed” investor will choose .music over Music.com
Additionally by stating this:
” Big companies promote their brands not generics. So even if music.com benefits from .music “leaked” traffic it does not mean that they will financially gain from it”
You also negating the “potential’ value of .music think about it.
2 more years of hearing nonsense like this (or even longer) …
Good grief!
No way does music.com sell for over $10 million…not a chance.
and what does .Music sell for?
Groupon can get an offer for $6 billion, (which probably would have been wise to take), but “no way” can Music.com sell for over $10 million? Hmmm.
@Constantine:
…and that is the goal of .music. To increase willingness to pay and create a safe haven for music consumption.
And why couldn’t someone achieve the same result on music.com if you can do it on .music?
Καλησπέρα.
.music sells for $3-$5 million. Music.com sells for $8-$10 million.
“A lot of the best possible generic domains in the world are gone.”
Where did they go? Ask the bands Police to buy Police.com and Eagles to buy Eagles.com (both parked pages). Notably many of the big band pages in .COM are parked pages. Many of the best possible generic domains are still held by big domainers. They are not gone.
“Sex.com did at one time make a lot of money. Six figures a month.”
Yes it did. With parked pages. The parked pages business model is evaporating.
“”So even if music.com benefits from .music “leaked” traffic” Its not a theory its a certainty. Just look at the traffic on xxx.com after .XXX launched, traffic more than doubled.”
Under that hypothesis, I own music.co, so I am a beneficiary of “leaked” music.com traffic which inevitably will also come from .music. Sounds like a nice circle to me 🙂
“If you get millions of visitors a month and can’t figure out a way to make money on that traffic shame on you”
I agree with you on this one but it is obvious that not all traffic is equal and the intent is always one that is critical here. Our objective was .MUSIC. Our goal was to get people to sign up to a petition to support a cause (like a community-based .music) to cater to our.MUSIC efforts and building the .MUSIC brand than thinking short-term of making money.
“Insurance.com was bought by QuinStreet, others like Hotels.com, Travel.com, Cars.com are long gone. You need a $10M + domain on the market for it to sell. Music.com has that potential”
You are not comparing apples with apples. Look at Adwords. The hotel, travel, cars and insurance industry enjoys higher PPC and their conversions can translate to big bucks that is legal. The Adwords competition is fierce. With music terms it is not as fierce and terms are cheaper. Also, there is no piracy in hotel, travel, cars and insurance to compete with. Compete with free and then come and tell me a business model that beats that. Add the licensing fees, bandwidth fees as well as the difficulty of differentiation beyond design/brand and you have a problem.
Music.com has potential but it is obvious that Insurance.com and the rest that you mentioned have business models that are not affected by piracy and “free.” Give me one true exclusive music tech company in the music industry that makes money off music (Apple does not count). Spotify? Pandora? Even brick and mortar corporations use music as a loss leader. Ask Walmart or Best Buy. It is the sad truth.
“Kim DotCom seems to have done pretty well with it and now from some accounts just out today the case against him is falling apart and the Prime Minster of New Zealand even apologized to him today”
Will be interesting to see how everything develops with Megabox. Unfortunately he has pissed off a lot of people with Megaupload. Kim DotCom is associated with “Mega.” It is his brand. Hence the upcoming Megabox.com.
“what does .Music sell for?”
It is not for sale 🙂 Community will win out. In terms of Music.com I would buy it for the right price.
“Groupon can get an offer for $6 billion, (which probably would have been wise to take), but “no way” can Music.com sell for over $10 million?”
But $10m makes absolutely no sense when you look at the context of digital music and the landscape. I am the most biased music guy and I can tell you that for certainty. In terms of Groupon, that is a venture-backed initiative with a brand name. The coupon industry is exploding especially in a down economy. That is one of the key areas where affiliate marketing is highly successful. On that note do you ever see affiliate marketers sell coupons for music? Nope. Not enough money in it. They focus on affiliate programs that have higher earnings per visitor. Look at CJ and observe the highest EPC. It is not music.
Let me give you guys some affiliate EPC numbers from Commission Junction:
Music:
MOG.com (streaming website like Spotify): $0.85 earned every 100 clicks
Live365.com (online radio like Pandora): $0.65 earned every 100 clicks
Guitar Center (musical instrument store): $19.93 earned every 100 clicks
Guitar Center that sells instruments does not compete with piracy and as you can see their EPC is higher but it is still nearly $20 which is lower by a significant margin when compared to:
Insurance:
L&G Home Insurance: $1,157 earned per 100 clicks
Homebase Finance: $549 earned per 100 clicks
Cars:
JunkMyCar: $140.78 EPC
TireRack: $83.54
Travel:
Medjet: $218.48 EPC
Expedia.fr: $109 EPC
Marriott: $76 EPC
Again, no traffic is created equal. Some sectors are more profitable than others. Duplication is key. Music can be accessed for free. Hence the mess the global music industry is in. Piracy has changed the entire landscape. Hard to compete with free. When people think websites and music they think about listening and downloading. I hope things turn around to compensate artists, enable new models and thwart piracy and this is a corner piece to .MUSIC. I love music.com and would be great to own it. But unfortunately the math and landscape does not work, especially with discussions about $5m and $10m. Of course someone can pay that amount but it is quite a risky play. If the numbers can not showcase the risk then I do not know what will. However if someone asked me which domain I would want to have if I had a choice I would say music.com but it has nothing to do with ROI. Music is a passion of mine but even “acquiring” passions have a price.
Constantine
I realize that a big portion of the crowd here is a .COM supporter that is not a fan of the new gTLD program nor believes in the new gTLD program’s potential for innovation. I am not going to get into the whole .COM vs gTLD debate because it has been discussed a million times and is overkill. However, the writing is on the wall. It is the future.
This is the best time to sell Music.com and I can see why this move makes sense. What is the asking price? Anyone know?
mus PERMALINK
“I realize that a big portion of the crowd here is a .COM supporter ”
and so are nearly ALL ‘500 Fortune 500’ companies, when it comes to their BRAND and Branding :
” .com it is…”
Domo Sapiens PERALINK
BILLIONAIRE Carlos Slim’s new business is hosted at: Ora.TV
BILLIONAIRE Mark Cuban’s new business is hosted at: Axs.TV
Times, they are a changin’…
“and so are nearly ALL ’500 Fortune 500′ companies, when it comes to their BRAND and Branding :” .com it is…”
Big companies and Fortune 500 companies applying for new gTLDs: Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Airbus, Intel, Disney even niche car companies such as Ferrari and Lamborghini. Hundreds of big brands have applied for their .BRAND gTLD and many will also follow.
If you are talking about the present then since there is an absence of .BRAND gTLDs then .COM can claim dominance. It is not a fair argument you are making. By the way, even Verisign applied for new gTLDs, especially IDN-related ones. The direction is obvious. The domain namespace will change.
Most major brands will have their own gTLD and they will use it to their advantage. If they did not claim them in the first round they will claim them in the second. Makes too much sense for them not to.
Change is inevitable. I can not see how many are not accepting what will transpire in a year or so from now. Will be fun to watch regardless.
@mus
Music.com could be so much more than simply digital music downloads. (iTunes pretty much owns that, anyway.) It could be used for news, reviews, interviews, concert sales… basically a central hub for anything music related. And if it did those things well, you should be able to expect a great deal more than a million visitors per month, which should translate into a good number of revenue stream opportunities, and not simply “affiliate crap.”
As far as Groupon and the “coupon industry exploding,” in the past month, I’ve been hearing the exact opposite. But Groupon’s stock is up 7 cents at the moment, so I could be totally wrong about that. I’m sure they’ll be worth 6 billion in no time. 😉
Grim is exactly right. If all you are doing is focusing on music downloads, then you are viewing this way too narrowly. Music is not only an absolutely enormous industry with so many different parts to it, as Grim alludes to, but music is so central to people’s lives that they love talking about it. This adds a major social component to it. And having such a social component lends a site to increased pageviews and reasons to visit. People love to talk about music with their friends and people love to talk about music with people who have similar interests in music even if they aren’t friends.
Music.com done the right way would be worth a fortune.
mus wrote:
“Change is inevitable. I can not see how many are not accepting what will transpire in a year or so from now. Will be fun to watch regardless.”
—
Yes, but in a year, the change will be much bigger than anything having to do with the gTLDs. Anyone who can’t see that has tunnel vision, and isn’t paying attention to what’s really happening in regard to people’s changing browsing habits.
The day:
amazon.com google.com ebay.com apple.com cnn.comthedomains.com godaddy.com etc etc stop using their respective .com as their brand ” hell will freeze over”.
Google without the .com is Nothing.
I do agree with your last line “it will be fun to watch ” but save the “snake oil” pitch for the launch, in about 2 or more years from now…
based on the pre-regs a ton of domainers will jump and hoard the best and as it’s usual the case that will be the “kiss of death” for any new and upcoming gTLD all of this while the secular world remains clueless.
Is there an opportunity to make money ..absolutely.
Shovel…Picks ..get your shovels and picks.
Could you explain why these extensions failed at the User level :
.tv.info .travel .co .biz .mobi .tel etc etc
And why .music won’t?
(the question is not if domainers made money or not)
@Domo Sapiens,
Do you live under a rock? The .tv extension is just beginning to be widely used, with pretty decent aftermarket sales…in other words, it’s just now beginning to take off.
The funding guy above pointed out that Mark Cuban and Carlos Slim (both billionaires) are using the .tv extension for their new ventures.
“Could you explain why these extensions failed at the User level :
.tv.info .travel .co .biz .mobi .tel etc etc ”
The key issue here is user adoption and community focus and specialization.
Maybe you should look into why .EDU has been a success. Without .EDU Facebook would not be around since there would be no way to validate student email addresses that end in .EDU. .EDU only allows accredited post secondary educational institutions to register i.e quality control.
Also you can look at adoption of ccTLDs. These are composed of communities where trust and usage is at the top. .DE means Germany and so forth. This is why .COM has had difficulties penetrating international countries such as Germany, Netherlands and so forth.
There are numerous case studies but generics with no community that believes in them and gains from them directly and indirectly will fail.
I can argue .TV has been a success. The adoption of it has been doing fairly well for the TV croud even though it is a ccTLD of a tiny country. From that perspective it is a huge success.
In regards to .BIZ it is too generic and .COM already exist. I do not believe in .WEB or .SITE etc. Just not niche enough.
In regards to .TRAVEL and .MOBI it is all about execution and timing as well as industry adoption. I could point fingers to the leadership teams of those. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the domain itself but the strategy was wrongly executed. The .TEL was “innovative” for ICANN purposes but not disruptive enough and too limiting. Again the .TRAVEL and .MOBI pre-launch campaign has not been as extensive as ours which is continuing and you have the nearly the entire music community and major players supporting a .music gTLD under a community model.
The only new gTLDs that will be a success will be the ones that will become industry standards. To become industry standards there needs to be a value proposition for those using it beyond the vanity of the domain extension. We are developing a song registry and premium channels for .MUSIC. This has not been done before and we are focusing exclusively on community. Unfortunately no domainers can register .MUSIC domains and hold them hostage or put parking pages. We have specific use polices: ONLY music-related content. We also have validations and have protected lists for all the major bands and brands so cybersquatting will not occur. More importantly we are building community.
In one word: adoption is key. None of the previous gTLD launches has done a multi-year campaign similar to us and our supporters and mCMOs are leaders in the music space. We have been educating them for years and pointing out how a safe .music gTLD that is community driven can benefit its constituents.
You can go read our application for more info on our plans. The reason why we selected to go for a community-based application is because my belief is that this is the only way to gain an industry standard i.e to get the community involved and to design music-centric policies around a niche TLD.
By no means am I implying any new gTLD will be as big as .COM but volumes of registrations does not mean success. Success is about usage and creating high quality content. This is what people and search engines like.
Domo
“”(the question is not if domainers made money or not)””
Why is that the standard?
Do you worry about if Afilias made money on running the .mobi registry?
Its a different business model, running a registry and being a domainer
Having said that I have made money on .me and on .co
I didn’t invest in .mobi and only got internet.biz
Constantine
Just for the record you could do the same thing with music.com as .music by selling
subdomains so instead of selling the domain gaga.music to the lady you could just sell the subdomain of gaga.music.com
We can argue all day.
The bottom line is this sale will be the single biggest test and barometer EVER for a domain name.
Probably the most valuable domain to ever be out there in a new more matured internet.
Yes, in the 190’s and early 2000’s $5 million would get the job done.
I will be on record saying that the floor could be 10 times that.
NEEE, WANT, DESIRE.
If the 3 big GIRLS go at it, you can see a $50mm sale. A $100mm sale and they won’t be overpaying if they have a billion dollar annual business plan. Nobody is buying a domain here. They are buying a sector of the economy that just happens to be the hottest sector for HUNDREDS of years!
This has the potential to be all that. You know what it will depend on? The FORTITUDE and the STOMACH of the seller and the PATIENCE of the broker. The 3 GIRLS are going to scratch each others eyes out going for the prize. And if not, the net is not as ripe and mature as we think. This IS the barometer that will tell all.
That should be
NEED, WANT, DESIRE.
@Rick,
$10 million, tops. Care to bet on whether the final sales price is closer to $10 million than $50 million?
$10 mil or $50 mil is not the point.
It’s how far have we actually come.
Let’s say Hotel.com came on the market today.
Knowing what they know NOW, what would that DOMAIN sell for. Not the business. Just the domain.
Would the chains show up to bid or not? Would they spend millions or not?
Knowing they BLEW it the first time, to they even KNOW they blew it??
Knowing what they know now. That’s the point.
If they are sharp it will go into the tens of millions and if they have learned nothing it will be whatever it will be.
@mus
“Also you can look at adoption of ccTLDs. These are composed of communities where trust and usage is at the top. .DE means Germany and so forth. This is why .COM has had difficulties penetrating international countries such as Germany, Netherlands and so forth.”
The .ccTLD/.com axis in countries like Germany, the UK and the Netherlands would occupy over 80% of the registered domain market in that country. The transition to ccTLD dominance of these markets happened long ago but it is a natural trend because people identify with their local ccTLD in a way that they don’t identify with .com or the gTLDs. It is part of their psychological identity. As a country level market matures, there is a transition to ccTLD because most business is local.
I agree with the other points, especially about usage and development. What distinguishes healthy TLDs from not so healthy or Dead Zone TLDs is development. Development increases visibility which increases usage, which increases development. If a TLD fails to trigger that process, it becomes a Dead Zone and development levels in the TLD continue to fall.
The “Must Develop” concept for .music is interesting. The .co ccTLD has over 40% of its domains PPC parked (many on Godaddy’s PPC landing page for undeveloped domains) or on holding pages (COInternet’s figures obfuscate the usage and development patterns in the ccTLD). Development takes time. Not including a speculative element (domainers and domaining) will result in lower registration volume but it may have other benefits in that it might help increase the trust factor in the TLD.
The music.com domain is a great generic domain but .music seems to be quite different. It would be a category killer in the US market as .com is the de-facto US ccTLD. And faced with the uncertainty over all these new gTLDs, there is the possibility that the ordinary user will find refuge in the certainty of their ccTLD and .com TLD.
Funding
What is your prediction on what .Music will sell for
Domo
As far as .co there are more than 1M registered
.Biz has over 2 million registered so they are not fail in terms of selling domain registrations
You are only talking about buying low and selling high which is a limited space and personally I’m up on .Co
Michael,
.MUSIC is not up for auction so not sure why you are asking what it “will sell for”. Remember we are going for community and that means that has priority. Not sure why so many believe that the nearly the entire music community is wasting their time going after “community.” The reason that ICANN created community is for sectors that involve IP and vulnerable data such as banking, insurance, copyrights etc. For example, if a private entity gets .BANK and not a community I think the whole ICANN process will be seen as a complete moneygrab.
The entire legitimacy of ICANN will be thrown outside the window if ICANN does not look at the community scoring and award these community-driven extensions.
Hearing numbers like $50m for music.com is fascinating. If the labels wanted Music.com they could have bought it. Instead they decided on Vevo.com. You don’t think Music.com was an option? It certainly was. They just did not want to pay unreasonable money for it. Music companies will never pay this kind of money. If you are talking about Apple, Google or Amazon then perhaps yes but why would they? Their brands are more important than anything. Disney sold both movie.com and movies.com to Fandango that created an entirely different destination (movie.com is a redirect to movies.com) for them. Not really a money-making machine but again we are dealing with an industry that is pirate-dominated as well.
Where is the brand alignment though and will branding a generic instead of a brand hurt the actual brand? I just don’t see it happening with major brands but it is good timing to sell. I might be wrong. If someone buys it will not be from a usual suspect. Best of luck to Billy and the rest of the Music.com guys. They have been trying to figure out a business model for years now. Only a large company with resources that complement music would make sense to buy it. The digital play is not sustainable and a competitive advantage difficult to attain.
Its not up for auction yet and I know you think your going to get it on a community application but I think your not.
I actually like you very much
you’re certainly one of the nicest guys I have met in the ICANN environment so I’m more than ine with me if you do win it without an auction, but I always call it like I see it, and in my opinionthe TLD will wind up in auction.
and I would not be shocked to see a $25M price on the TLD or larger
So with that in mind I think Music.com is a bargain at $10M
Just to be clear I don’t own a piece of music.com, not a broker that going to get a commission off it and don’t have a signed deal to represent any .music applicant, including yours so I don’t have a horse in the race
Just my opinion
@Rick,
They still don’t get it.
@Michael,
$185,000
Mike@
what do you mean ” personally I’m up on .Co ” ???
Michael Berkens PERMALINK
Domo
“”(the question is not if domainers made money or not)””
Why is that the standard?
**********
I think my response was more of a poor attempt to a pre-emeptive strike before somebody mentioned the projected massive returns, I think at this point of the game there is no doubt there will be “boat loads”of money to be made, as of lately you see more and more companies trying to jump in the bandwagon the “cat is out of the bag” and the new Domain Gold Rush is coming,
Sure some will make money…lots of it …agreed
but who?
EMO they will be the same culprits as the previous land-rushes : registry, registrars, re-sellers, consultants, drop-catchers, premium domain holders ( of the “Greater Fool” variety) etc etc, potentially hundreds of launches the size of what it was the most succesful tld launch ever “.co” at once (forget real end users0…the problem I have (personally) is when new gTLDs are misrepresented, sold in an unrealistic way and under the wrong premises with statements such as these :
“I think many here have the illusion that traffic translates to money in regards to music sites that are legal.”
“Those who think .COMs will have more value are in for a surprise.”
This one takes top honors:
“The writing is on the wall though for music.com. Google is changing their algorithm (author rank algorithm) and these types of exact match domains will be losing their search ranking”
Yet when you search for ‘music’ at the big G you’ll see that # 1 result is:
Music.com | Music Videos by Your Favorite Artists for Free
In addition it appears to me some people are expecting that the success of these upcoming TLDs will rely only in having better registries, registrars etc etc
What about the consumer? the enduser?
Thanks Michael.
Domo
Also the extensions of .co. biz and did not fail at the user level
.co has over 1M registrations .biz has over 2M domains registered
MHB:
We are talking 2 different levels here, I am referring to the “registration by, acceptance and use” of the general public. (non-domainers , everyday people )
I fee the number of registration proves the success of a selected few, at the risk of sounding like a broken record: registries, registrar, re-sellers, insiders (cough cough) brokers and a few selected domainers.
To them congratulations. (non sarcastically)
However the general public at large remains clueless about all of this…
Even the mother of all .co ‘s, the moniker… the highly touted ” O.co” prove to be a gianormous failure even after the millions and millions spent on traditional media, after the confusion they decided to revert to the .com “the .com mantra prove to be to much”
Surely SOME people will be have great success with the New gTLD’s and will reap the benefits but that is not what I argued about…
IF, something extraordinary happens, and ICANN fails to consider community adequately – the .MUSIC TLD goes to auction . . .
It will be telling to see the comparative prices Music.com and .MUSIC TLD fetch at auction.