SOUND ON SOUND

[Alanqa]

Your real name is Mohammed Adhami???

Just call yourself Adhami. It’s a really cool name and single names are great.

Not sure about the Adam Artman. A bit too close to Aardman (the animation company behind Wallace & Grommet). Also it’s a bit boring and westernised. I’m already booking tickets to see Adhami.

[Adam Artman]

thank so much my freinds.i think it's a big challenge for me

the challenge to represent without misrepresenting yourself,
girls used to use male pen names to author books,.
if your name is to unrecognizable people will never see it for the simple fact of never searching that word.
the letter A or 1 is always more searched and comes first in directories.
Some businesses in the past for phone books in America would use the letter A with a dash - than the business name,
it got so out of hand there would be hundreds of businesses trying to out do one another by trying to be the first name in the phone book for business.
Pretty soon you got AA, than AAA, than AAAA. you get the picture.
It was a total mess.
Like hey check out my studio for recording called AAA - desert studio.
or this artist is great I love the song called, "....love...." etc.
It's a matter of going complete banal or just doing you and picking something you can stand behind for a long time.
I've used many diff. pseudonyms in the past,.
Decided against that after awhile.
Sooner you stay the same,
the sooner people see you.
No matter the name.

[CS70]

I've used many diff. pseudonyms in the past,.
Decided against that after awhile.
Sooner you stay the same, the sooner people see you. No matter the name.

Are you sure? :mrgreen:

[desmond]

Yep, his parents named him "Guest", no last name.

Actually that is quite a cool artist name...

[MrRandom]

"It is more important to have a recognizable brand that represents your personality than to have a "nice" or "clever" name.

It's just as important to make good music that people identify with and interact with.

When this subject comes up, I still bring up the band Korn. It's not really relevant if you enjoy their music or genre. Nearly everybody has heard of them and they have the most dumb name possible... but to the degree that they have never changed their logo since 1994, it is recognizable. The argument is that they were marketable and had a sound that was original. It's a contract in a box.

[MarkOne]

I released my 1st album under my own name, which is a pretty common one. Shared with a senator, nascar driver, rap singer, lawyer in the us somewhere and a half famous photographer. So I’m a long way down any google searches.

So generic in fact that both iTunes and Spotify haves lumped my album into someone else’s artist page. Both platforms are apparently sorting that out.

At least a unique name will ensure er, uniqueness.

[tea for two]

Of the thousands forumees on SOS the ones I recall

1. makes me smile : Huge LongJohns.

2. something familiar in this instance to do with a body part : Red Bladder.
Tupac has the familarity of the number Two.

3. Exotic sounding : Zukan.
Englebert Humperdink already mentioned.


Clever or complex names I just can't seem to recall until a see a post by these persons.
Actual names are ....... normal so they don't roll off my memory block as they all mashup into a soup of normal names.

[Puma21]

Very important, very important. It is the front door of how you stand for the world. Evidently if the music is not good, it doesn't matter. But this is just the artist names we're talking about. I believe the best names are googleable ones, unique ones, which have something to say about the sound style of your music and sound good. It is so important to have a good name that it is a world of difference to have good music with a bad name rather than good music with a good name.

[Arpangel]

I’m going to say it isn’t important at all, you’ll become known for whoever you are, if you’re "that" good.
Some of my favourite musicians have very boring names, Brian Eno, he came from a family of postmen and that was the family name, Roger Eno, that’s pretty boring.
Mark E (Edward) Smith, "Mark Smith"....please.
Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Leonard Cohen, you wouldn’t have to look far to find more of those in the phone book.
David Sylvian born David Alan Batt, he obviously added the Sylvian bit to add a bit of sparkly silvery glamour, and that’s a good example of how to identify with your market, and the image you want to put across, better than Dave Batt I suppose.

[PsykRev]

I disagree with much of the above - a killer name that one cannot get out of one's head can mean the difference between success and failure. The classic example is Englebert Humperdink.

Arnold Dorsey had great management and a fantastic voice. He was the right man at the right time to fill that crooner slot for lonely grannies (orf whoever buys that stuff) but as Arnold Dorsey, his career was going nowhere fast. For ten years he got nowhere.

Then his manager and old friend Gordon Mills suggested a name change to something people would always remember and Englebert was born!

And that can work the other way about as well - a great name gets dumped in favour of a crap name and the act fails - A band came into our studio called something or other and I cannot remember what the hell they were called. The singer (who's name I do remember) was great. The songs were killer! The musicianship was spot-on.

They started in school together and told me that they had been quite a local success. Kids traveled a long way just to see them - and then they told me that they were formerly known as the band Snodgrass.

Yes, I'd heard of them - wow! But they had really made the grade as a terrific local band obviously destined for greater things - but that was the name of their maths teacher and he had pleaded with them to change their name to something else.

The recordings were great and I alerted Sony and there was a bit of a bidding war over them. Some indi label got them because they agreed that they could keep their name. The A&R guy from the local Sony office was adamant that they go back to being 'Snodgrass' so they went with the (rather dishonest) indie label. A six-figure sum was put into them and they did a couple of tours of America. They got nowhere. All of them left the music biz for obscurity.

That was a long, long time ago - but it teaches us all a salutory lesson. Names are important. If a name fails to stick in the memory, so will you!

After writing all the above, I have just asked mysef if I could remember the name of the original poster - I could not and I had to scroll back to see what it was. It has therefore failed already to pass the first hurdle!

Wow great story.