Music fan site question

[namanimal]

I want to make a fan site about a musician. I am buying the .com of his last name. I think it will be awesome. However how do I go about getting permission to make a site about him so I dont get sued for selling cd's or whatever. I emailed his official site and they didnt get back to me. Thanks for your help guys.

 

[Grimm]

I dont think you can get sued for selling his CD. (Unless it bootleg). There are plenty of fan sites for artists all over. The only thing you should have it a disclaimer letting visitors know its a fan site and not his affliated with the artist personally.

Check out these fan sites:

http://www.beyonceworld.net/main.htm
http://www.madonnalicious.com/
http://www.audioslaved.com/

 

[dgridley]

It's a touchy subject when using celeb names and profiting off them.. you CAN be sued down the road if you profit directly off a celebrity name.. they may or may not win. You might even squeak by without ever being sued.

I want to make a fan site about a musician. I am buying the .com of his last name. I think it will be awesome. However how do I go about getting permission to make a site about him so I dont get sued for selling cd's or whatever. I emailed his official site and they didnt get back to me. Thanks for your help guys.

 

[Peter]

dgridley is absolutely correct.

1 thing you should of course do is make sure the site is as reputable as possible. If you have areas where the general public can post then make sure they behave themselves. Most bands/musicians do not mind fan sites and encourage them.

I ran a fan site myself for a film which 1 of my old favorite bands starred in and I got to know the director and he ended up sending me stuff occasionally and I was also named in the special thanks section on the soundtrack directly because of the site (it was a low budget horror movie but did extremely well sales wise). The domain name itself was the name of the film but with hyphens between the words.

If in the event you are contacted by the staff of the official site and they ask you to do something ensure (as long as it is of course not a blatantly stupid request) then do as they ask. If they see you are willing to cooperate with them then they are more likely to leave you alone (for instance I was asked to ensure I put a disclaimer on the site crediting the photographer for his work which I of course did).

 

[dgridley]

I can never hear that often enough!!

dgridley is absolutely correct.

 

[Gerrit]

Be sure the band doesn't make a claim that the surname of their singer is a TM protected. In that case, when buying name-of-singer.com you could get sued for registering his surname for untrustful purpose. Of course, if your fan site is any decent the singer will very likely be flattered, but still, better ask permission in advance.

Selling CD's is done by lot of fansites, but profit goes to the record company and artist.

and Grimm, check out some real music man Beyonce?! Guilty pleasure!

 

[Grimm]

and Grimm, check out some real music man Beyonce?! Guilty pleasure!

Its not about the music. I just like the eyecandy.

 

[namanimal]

Its not exactly an american band, they are from another country, but of course they have some kind of sponsorship here, i just have no idea on how to find out who represents them. I could call the major record companies i guess. I know that they will have to get some royalties if i sell cd's etc. But I should be able to keep most of the profit I think. Say google results have about 5-7 million for the name. What kind of traffic am I looking at if i get on page 1? Thanks

 

[Peter]

Say google results have about 5-7 million for the name. What kind of traffic am I looking at if i get on page 1? Thanks

That is impossible to say. Just because google has a lot of results for that query does not mean it is searched a lot.

Regarding you being able to keep the profits on sales of cd's. When you buy cd's from a distributor the royalties are paid from that you personally do not pay royalties. The only thing you have to pay on top of that price is the applicable tax (and of course things like shipping and payment processor costs).

If you are going to sell cd's on the fan site make sure that you only sell legitimate cd's and no bootlegs etc otherwise you are inviting a c&d plus also lawsuits from the RIAA or similar organisations.

 

[dgridley]

You need to go by OVT or Wordtracker, not Google results..

 

[namanimal]

I know about domain names , but i've never made a website before. The overture without extension is about 100k for the first and last name, and about 10k for just the last name. I'll own the last name, that should still pull up high on searches with first and last I imagine. Also if there are 100k overture for a music artist, is that searches per day on yahoo essentially. Not counting google or others or is it per month like they say, which i doublt because the ovt+ext is per day even though it says per month.