.audio

Status:	Delegated
Type:	Generic
Category:	Media
More information:

.audio is a gTLD that was proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program. Uniregistry's application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 15 May 2014.

Background

Registry Operator

1. Uniregistry Corp., a new registry company, which applied for 54 gTLDs, established by domain investor Frank Schilling.

Previous Applicant

1. Donuts (Holly Castle, LLC), the company is represented by Daniel Schindler, co-founder and EVP of Donuts, a start-up company which applied for 307 gTLDs. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.

Private Deal

In February 2014, it was reported that Uniregistry and Donuts reached a private deal which resolved a number of New gTLD string contention sets involving only the two companies. Although the deal coincided with a round of Private Auctions conducted by Applicant Auction on February 18th, neither companies immediately commented on the nature of the deal and Applicant Auction did not disclose the participants of its recent auctions. If the companies had participated in a private auction, it would mark the first private auctions that Uniregistry participated in, after the company initially questioned the legality of private auctions in the New gTLD Program.

In the private deal, Donuts became the sole applicant for .furniture, .auction, and .gratis, while Uniregistry won .audio and .juegos.

Contract Signed

On 20 March 2014 Uniregistry received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .audio after passing all the required processes needed to become a Registry Operator for the string.

Delegation and Availability

.audio was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 15 May, 2014, completing the successful application for the string.