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DotMusic, the company that started selling .music domains seven months ago, has had a relatively successful launch, but one in four domains sold have not yet gone live.<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest registry transaction reports show that there were just over 30,000 registered .music domains at the end of January. Registry CEO Constantine Roussos tells us it\u2019s over 31,000 today.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more registrations than any community TLD and it is not even close,\u201d Roussos said. <\/p>\n It\u2019s certainly true that .music is already the largest generic-term Spec 12 Community gTLD from the 2012 application round.<\/p>\n But while 31,000 in six months is a good start for a 2012-round gTLD, there are currently only about 7,500 domains in the .music zone file, showing that about three quarters of names have not been activated.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the lowest unactivated domains rate in gTLDs \u2014 only about 15% of .xxx\u2019s registered names are in its zone file, for example \u2014 but it\u2019s pretty low. The similarly-sized .baby has about 84% utilization.<\/p>\n A low utilization rate usually means a high proportion of defensive registrations \u2014 registrants have no intention of ever using their domains but want to keep them out of the hands of others \u2014 but something different might be going on here.<\/p>\n As a Community gTLD, .music has extra hoops to jump through before registrants can activate their domains. <\/p>\n They have to have their identity and nexus to the music industry verified and obtain a special code called a Music ID from the registry, which can also be used for future registrations.<\/p>\n Roussos said that \u201cthe majority of the registrants have never owned a domain name before, which is great news for us\u201d. He added: \u201cMy other guess is that most just wait until they are ready to use the domain to get verified\u201d.<\/p>\n He said that many registrants are choosing to take advantage of a feature called SmartPage<\/a>, which gives bands a template-driven profile page containing basic information and links to their socials and such.<\/p>\n If you find this post or this blog useful or interestjng, please support Domain Incite<\/a>, the independent source of news, analysis and opinion for the domain name industry and ICANN community.<\/b>\n<\/p>\n \n\t\tTweet<\/a><\/p>\n
\nRelated<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n