What To Name Your Band

Naming a band, as simple as it may seem, can sometimes become a huge pain in the ass. In marketing, naming your band is synonymous to branding.

The name of your band can either make or break your career. It's supposed to lead you to opportunities and endless possibilities. So it's important to note that it should be thought out well.

I hope to share three basic pointers...

1) Coin a band name that delivers insignificant meaning to you or to anyone.

Great band names like U2, The Police, Weezer, The Beatles, Coldplay, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, The Cure worked because the names didn't convey anything related to music.

What does U2 stand for? It's a German submarine used in World War I. The Police? Cops don't sing. Weezer? What's that? The Beatles? What's that? Pearl Jam? Nirvana? Yeah I know what this word means but it's not about music. The Cure? Weird name but it worked.

As a result, instead of the band contriving to brand their music by its name to build their career, it worked the other way around. The music that emanated from these giants instead effortlessly shaped the band.

The effect of this subliminal branding strategy now allows a prospected fan to identify a Coldplay track by simply listening to their music. How brilliant is that?

2) The alliteration approach.

Your band may have a better chance of recall with this method. Alliteration is when using two words sharing the same first letters of each.

This approach has proven to be very effective in cartoon characters - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Woody Woodpecker. Alliteration works because it makes memorization easier especially when there are only few syllables used.

3) Check the internet.

Just recently, three local bands are on sabbatical simply because they discovered in the internet that another band shares the same name as they do gigging and selling their albums (yes they released more than one) somewhere in this planet.

A name is very important. Period.

Therefore it is very important not to take for granted such opportunities as googling just to check if your band's name is already taken or not. Uniqueness can be an advantage - or if not, at least a name that's a little different from what is popular sounding at the time.

One important suggestion is that if you think you incidentally coined a good band name, that no other band is sharing it with you, and most importantly, the domain name is available - buy it. Period.