Forget practicing, recording & playing gigs — finding a great name for your band is one of the biggest challenges for any group to go through. Even once you’ve found one the process is still not finished, because now you need to find a matching domain name for your band’s website.

If you’ve ever searched for a domain name before, then you’ve undoubtedly searched for something that was already taken. This is all the more frustrating when searching for a band name that took you months to agree on, because thinking of a new name is the last thing you want to be doing at this point.

Fortunately, there is a way to get a domain name with your band’s name in it without needing to add extra words like ‘music’ or ‘official’ and make it needlessly long. If the .com version of your domain name isn’t available, then all you need to do is take a look at other top-level domains to use for your band’s site.

What are top-level domains?

Even if you have no idea what a top-level domain (TLD) is, you use one every single time you go to a website. A TLD is what is to the right of the final period in a domain name. Most commonly this is .com, though you may also be familiar with other TLDs like .net and .org, or TLDs relating to countries like .ca for Canada or .us for the United States.

In early 2014, the world of domain names opened up with the introduction of new top-level domains. Ever since, new TLDs have continuously been rolling in — in fact, we have over 350 top-level domains available at Hover!

With more alternatives for TLDs, this now means that you are pretty much guaranteed to find the exact domain name you’re looking for, as long as you’re open to using something else at the end of your domain. With options ranging anywhere from .pizza to .horse, you shouldn’t have a problem finding one that’s great for your band’s domain.

Here’s a breakdown of which ones will be the most relevant for any musician’s website:

Music top-level domains

There are a handful of music top-level domains that might be just what your band’s domain needs. The most obvious choice would be .band, though there are others that might be an even better fit depending on your particular group. Here are all of the music TLDs available at the moment:

• .band
• .rocks
• .dance
• .hiphop
• .audio
• .fm
• .guitars

TLDs for your online presence

Instead of a music top-level domain, you may want to use one that describes what can be found on your website. For instance, your website may be for general information, press or a fan club. Here are some TLDs that place a little more emphasis on the website itself:

• .buzz
• .club
• .info
• .land
• .press
• .zone

Generic top-level domains

If you want to keep things truly generic and are just looking for an alternative to .com, here’s a selection of TLDs that will ensure that all of the attention will be focused on your domain and not your TLD:

• .xyz
• .net
• .co
• .site
• .online
• .website

Check if a word in your name is a TLD

One last option is to see if a word in your band’s name is also a top-level domain. If your band’s name was Flying Through Space, for example, .space is a TLD, so you could get flyingthrough.space as your domain name. To see if a word in your domain is available, check out our full list of available TLDs.

Have any other tips for finding a great domain name for your band? Please share in the comments!