Cypriot entrepreneur Constantine Roussos has beaten 7 other applicants, including Google, Donuts, Radix and Amazon, for the right to operate the .music new gTLD.
“If someone told me back then that it would’ve taken 11 years… I would’ve said to myself, ‘Do what you’re doing, dude,’” Roussos told Billboard. “It’ll take you 11 years, but do what you’re doing.”
Domain Incite had been speculating in recent days that it was likely Roussos’ DotMusic had won, and following victory noted that it wasn’t yet known how much was paid. DI notes that MMX was the last of the applicants to withdraw their application.
DotMusic faced early competition from Far Further, who had
the backing of some music industry heavyweights, but as Billboard reports, they
applied as a “community” applicant and failed to meet the threshold
required. When Far Further dropped out, the industry moved to back Roussos’
DotMusic. However they then fell afoul of the required “community” threshold.
They then appealed, a process that “was still ongoing when, in a surprising
turnaround, they struck a closed-door deal with the other remaining .music
suitors (including Google and Amazon) that resulted in the others withdrawing
their applications.”
This resulted in DotMusic avoiding a public auction to resolve
the contention set, a process that Roussos admits he would have had zero chance
of winning.
“If we did go to a public auction with ICANN, I would
have [had a] less than 0% [chance of] winning,” Roussos told Billboard,
adding, “This is kind of a shock for everyone, actually.”
The new generic top level domain is to be operated for “legitimate
members of the entire global music industry” and will take a strong stance
against any domain name involved in infringing copyright.
“If I would [ask] you, ‘What’s Queen’s official
website?’…It’s not Queen.com,” says Roussos by way of example. “If
I asked you ‘What’s Kiss’s website?’ Well hey, Kiss.com is a dating website…
And then you look at other ones, like Justin Bieber. JustinBieber.com is owned
by some blogger called Justin Bieber.”
For anyone interested in registering a .music domain name pre-registration is currently available which will give first communication and the opportunity to register the desired domain. However launch dates haven’t yet been announced.
For more information on the DotMusic application process and the ideas behind the application, see the Billboard article here. There are also a number of articles on Domain Incite including this most recent one here.
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