What's in a Name?
Truth be told, I'm a bit long in the tooth to be trying to make a name for myself in the music world. If I tell you that I started my career as a programmer in pre-Google times you'll see what I mean. In it's absence I tended to post my difficult technical problems to Usenet, a kind of pre-cursor of Reddit though Usenet has never gone away. As often as not, the answer to my query would be 'RTFM'. The polite translation for this abbreviation is 'read the fine manual'.
I'm the sort of person who gives up after reading half a page of flat-pack furniture instructions and just has a stab at it. I mean, you don't read a dictionary before you try to speak do you? Having said that, I quite often find myself having to dismantle my work to correct a mistake that I wouldn't have made if I'd followed the instructions.
There is no manual for getting your music heard though musician, 6 Music presenter and founder of Fresh on the Net, Tom Robinson covers most topics in his entertaining and accessible Masterclass from 2013. Among the nuggets of insight in his Masterclass, Tom emphasises the importance of choosing a good band name.
There are many factors to take into consideration when choosing a name for your act but chief among them are that your name should be unique and memorable. Though, of course, many of us use Google as a proxy for our memory these days so we can eliminate 'memorable' which leaves 'unique'.
Having chosen the name 'Lost Signal' the rest of my research consisted of typing the name into the 'create an account' page on SoundCloud to see if I could get away with it. It turned out that I could so that was that.
As Shakespeare said
choose your band name in haste, repent at leisure.
In the video, Tom calls out several acts whose names are the top hit when you type it into Google which is, in hindsight, the best measure of a good band name. Inevitably, Googling for 'Lost Signal' returns a plethora of helpful links about what to do if your phone / TV / whatever has lost it's signal. Worse, it reveals that there are a number of longer established acts who already go by that name. Worse still, the best known of those acts occupies the same electronica territory as me. A quick listen reveals that he is considerably more talented than me. Worse, worse still, I've named one of my tracks exactly the same as one of his.
My music is hopelessly tangled with Charles Rehill's probably to his chagrin even more than mine. Sorry Charles. Tom Robinson suggests that, despite the work that it entails, rebranding can be a worthwhile exercise, citing Alt-J as a success story. Though the thought of starting from scratch seems daunting, it's probably fair to say that there wouldn't be many mourners were this latest Lost Signal to vanish. I'm currently hunting for a happy middle ground somewhere between 'Lost Signal' and 'Car Seat Headrest'.
For each blog entry I champion a lesser known artist who I feel deserves a bigger audience. Today, it's the lush, melodic indie vibes of Eleanor Collides.
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