What if all musicians and bands had websites that visitors could be certain were safe, legit, above-board, official — like .gov and .edu websites? In the coming years, .music domains will become the norm for musicians worldwide, but only if we ACT NOW to keep it in the hands of independent artists.

There is an effort to make sure the new .music website names are protected from domain squatting and piracy, and to keep the names out of the hands of non-music corporations who have already snapped up a lot of the valuable Internet real estate.

The goal is to give DotMusic control over the .music top level domain. They would issue domain names to artists, bands, and other music companies; they would prohibit spammy “parking pages” and domain squatting; and they would ban any .music domain guilty of mass copyright infringement.

You can support that effort by e-signing this community support letter: http://music.us/sign. It takes less than a minute.

We know that domain names don’t sound all that exciting or cool, but this is very important. Because .music sites will become the norm for music-related content online, who controls that top level domain is a big deal.

So, who WILL win the right to assign .music domains: some big tech corporation, or a coalition of indie music groups who want to see it controlled by a community rather than a single company?

Please speak out in support of having the sale of .music domains run by the indie community, NOT a corporate giant. Visit this page now and e-sign the letter of support: http://music.us/sign.