Will we be out of BAND NAMES in 20 years time?

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There was this "Make your own debut album" thread, where you pick your album cover image from Flickr at random, get yoiur album title from a quotation site, and here it comes... choose your band name by using the 'random article' feature on WIKIPEDIA.

I believe there are real bands that have actually used that method to get their own band name.

Can't do that if it's trademarked. If you don't trademark it, all bets are off.

Try calling your band The Who, and see what happens.

Even restricting band names to English, it's unlikely we'll ever run out. Just look at some of the names Japanese bands come up with! School Food Punishment, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, Bump of Chicken, World's End Girlfriend...

Then there's the old joke "I want to call my band 'The Prevention' so people say we're better than The Cure."

Unless your name is Bruce Springsteen, and you are not THE Bruce Springsteen. Seems wrong, but true.

And when your career declines into an alcohol and drug fuelled haze, you can check into the Betty Fnord clinic.

ummm, how 'bout "Spruce Bringsteen"?

That's a good question. Technically and even legally, I would think you could get away with that, but I sure has heck wouldn't guarantee that the original Bruce wouldn't sue anyway. Wonder if anything like that's ever been attempted?

If you google Spruce Bringsteen you will see there is a MySpace page, a Facebook page and some YouTube links for that name....so I guess legal action has not been taken...

Or maybe Bruce's business manager, lawyer, or whoever advises him on such matters thinks there is no such thing as bad publicity, or a homage is a homage and who cares? I dunno just guessing...

Uh...

Those are his pages. Featuring his own music. The MySpace and Facebook are anyway. YouTube is a cluster**** though. There's all kinds of copyright violation on there, but since Google took it over, they've changed a lot of things to placate the artists. The single most effective thing they did was to start paying the fees, add advertising to make up for the fees, and they are clamping down a lot more on unauthorized copies being posted.

There's a really big difference too, between posting stuff that actually belongs to him under his name, and using his name to publish your own music. It's a totally different legal issue to call yourself Bruce Springteen, even if it is your real name, and use that to release your own music under. That would almost certainly bring his lawyers into action. People with that much notoriety and money trademark their names. They do not want their names associated with anyone else's music, because they don't want anyone riding their coat tails, or releasing crap using their name.

There have been cases where mere common folk have opened Facebook, MySpace or other accounts under famous names, and either have received cash offers or hostile takeovers by the celebrity. This is has been true of .com, .net etc. domains as well. If the name is trademarked, it's easy for them. If it's not, but they are famous enough, they can often do it anyway.

Just read that Facebook is now asking for authenticity, legal documentation that say, Snoop Dog really IS Snoop Dog...finally.

The internet still is the Wild West of copyright infringement, Intellectual Property theft, and all that. It has yet to be sorted. I am still waiting.

Information can be 'free' but stealing someone's copyright, music, images, is not free, from where I come from that is called theft.

Why I don't use places like Pinterest.

That is that, 'wow look at this photo, painting, design, I really like and I am going to rip it off and print it and put it on my wall, no wait I mean take it, borrow it whatever it is that people tell themselves', place.

Well now this thread really HAS gone sideways, back to the band names....

And I stand corrected, you are saying those Spruce Bringsteen pages all belong to the real Bruce? I read too fast, I really do...

It's inevitable.

We have already run out of original music, lyrics, and rhythm sequences; it's only a matter of time before we run out of original band names as well.

what about "spring brucesteen"? surely that capitalist versifier hadn't thought of that. yet.

Seriously (I know you were only joking, but believe it or not, people do sometime consider doing things like that, and it interests me). It isn't an issue of whether Bruce or his lawyers had already thought of and "locked up" any possible alternate versions of his name. I doubt they trademarked anything but his name.

If a band called themselves Spruce Bringsteen or Bring Sprucesteen, and never made it out of whatever hole in the wall town they played in, probably nothing would come of it. If they suddenly had a album that hit the charts, his lawyers might pay more attention.

There was a band in Canada recently called One I'd Trouser. They'd been using the name for years. They had one single that brought them enough recognition, and that started selling in the States to catch the attention of another band already using the name. Apparently where was a small settlement paid, and they changed their name eventually to The Trews.

Here's the funny thing though. Googe the band name, and there's nothing, zero, zip, nada about the other band anywhere. If a completly unknown band can force the hand of another band doing better than themselves, just because they got to it first, I'm sure BS could, if he wanted to, force bands using any form of his name to quit doing so if he wanted to.

It's all about rep. Sometimes the original artist doesn't give a crap, sometimes they do.

It's a litigious society we live in. If somebody with enough money doesn't like what you're doing and wants to stop you bad enough, they'll try.

^^^
this worship of money and power in our current corrupt culture, this oppressively pervasive "rent collecting," is one reason i have not bought one new piece of music in decades now. i try not to support our current evil system.

Hoodleboot

Shining Mary Partridge

Skunk Muffin

The Polynesian Vacuum Girls

I think we'll have plenty for a long time, and those were just off the top of my head.

the names
the monikers
the handles
the whatchamacalits
the whom
the other guys
the last group