A while ago, whilst we were already in the middle of setting up the business and preparing the site AOL went ahead an launched myAOL - 1 letter away from our myAWOL. The fact that google always kept asking 'Do you mean myaol?' made us realise our name was becoming increasingly 'un-ideal'.
So the hunt started for something new - and it was a real struggle as one might expect. Most 'interesting' domain names are taken for starters and we decided we needed something, as a music entertainment business was a little cool, and felt like it fitted - and also something bands would feel they could associated themselves with. We wanted short (so when a band puts their 'page on our site URL' up on a poster, it's not the whole alphabet), easy to remember and if you say the name, you know how to spell it.
It became obvious we shouldn't go down the 'made up word' route - the names just seemed like we were just another technology site, and it was problematic to even find 2 word combinations. Like many bands themselves, we even wrestled with the question of 'The' before our name - we very nearly became 'The Push' which summed us up quite well - but trademark issues made us shy away from that. We went through thousands of names, all checked on godaddy.. I got fed up with people who would get into heated discussions with me about their new favourite names but couldn't then answer ' but is the URL available?'.
Then we started playing with names and numbers, and 'LP33' came into the world. We could get the URLs and trademark's didn't seem to be an issue. Short, easy to remember - and if you're old enough or more of a serious 'muso' or vinyl freak you'd get that the name hints at old vinyl records, and the speed they play at. You don't need to get the connection, but its nice that its there.
So, there we have LP33.tv - perhaps fairly controversial, but when we did market research most people either liked it, or thought it was OK. That said, the people who hated it, REALLY hated it. The news came out last night and today we're busy changing URLs and all our entire web presence over to the new name.
Just to keep like interesting, today also sees the password come down on our Music Industry services site, theMIDB.com ahead of its launch next week. We are also actually getting really close to letting the world finally have access to the 'big deal' LP33.tv itself. It's a corker of a site, even if I do say so myself.
