Music.us is the launchpad of Constantine Ruossos' proposed .music gTLD. Russos' work with creating .music began in 2001, when he received Top Business Plan at the USC Business School Entrepreneur Program for his web music community business plan.[1] Music.us was founded in 2005 to help concentrate and continue the petitioning for the creation of .music.[2]

Type: Private
Industry: Music, gTLD expansion
Founded: 2002
Founder(s): Constantine Russos
Headquarters: 468 N. Camden Drive, Suite 123
Beverly Hills, CA
Country: USA
Website: Music.us
Twitter: @dotmusic

Plans

.music plans on offering its customers an embedded music player, and will be translated and launched in 8 other languages (IDNs); including French (.musique), Germanic (.musik), Hindi, Russian (.музыка), Japanese (.音楽), Korean (.음악), Arabic and Chinese (.音乐).[3] It also plans on donating proceeds from its domain registrations to non-profit organizations which promote music education, cultural diversity, fight piracy, support artists' welfare, and innovate within the industry. Music.us attends a number of international events to promote the creation and expansion of .music.

Reception

ICANN received a letter in mid-January, 2011, from the deputy general of the Recording Industry Association of America expressing their concern over the creation of any music related TLD. The RIAA seems to believe that the creation of music TLDs will increase threats of piracy and copyright infringement.[4]

The petition to create .music has received over 1,500,000 signatures, and Constantine Russos' .music related Myspace page is the most popular on the entire site with 4,300,000 friends.[5]

References