Constantine Roussos – Dot .Music founder
After a decade of supporting the music industry’s unique requirements for brand identity, Constantine Roussos can claim that he has finally won the war.
In the process, the Greek-Cypriot entrepreneur lost every battle – or so it seemed to the outsiders. Roussos kept hammering, moving forward despite all the challenges that appeared along the way.
Yesterday, ICANN officially allocated dot .Music to Constantine Roussos’s company, which promotes “community status” and is getting ready to roll out dot .Music domain names.
In an interview to Billboard, the dot .Music founder talks about his dream:
“When the idea for .music first struck him over 10 years ago, Roussos was inspired by the success of Facebook, which had created an online community viewed as trustworthy by originally allowing only college students with legitimate .edu email addresses to sign up.”
He continues:
“If someone told me back then that it would’ve taken 11 years… I would’ve said to myself, ‘Do you what you’re doing, dude, […] It’ll take you 11 years, but do what you’re doing.'”
“The only reason that Facebook is what it is today is because of a domain extension,” says Roussos. “What [Mark] Zuckerberg did, he wanted trust, he wanted real students and he wanted to get every single student in the United States to be in The Facebook, to create this network effect of a similar culture, similar community… It was based on verification and it was based on trust.”
So what is the future of dot .Music?
“When .music launches sometime next year, domains will become available in three phases. In the first, they will be opened up to all “verified trademark holders” (think Madonna, Drake, Paul McCartney, etc.) culled from a “globally protected marks list” of prominent artists and brands. In the second phase, members of Music Community Member Organizations (MCMOs) like ASCAP and BMI will be invited to apply. In the final phase, music domains will become open to all applicants.”
Dot .Music will offer .music domains around the $50 dollar mark, to allow everyone from amateur artists to professionals get their domain.
Read the full interview at Billboard.com.
