Another band with the same name?

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

For the last six months or so (might be longer) I have been using a band name for one of my ongoing projects which is fairly obscure reference to something that will probably be meaningless to anyone who didn't grow up in the 70s in the UK.

 

Before the first release I did a thorough online check for any band with the same or sigificantly similar name. For this I searched google, youtube and various streaming services. Nothing came up at that time and no domains in reference to the name had been registered. I did another search this week and a facebook page came up for a band in Scotland using the name. This band was active from 2014 to 2021 when they broke up, but it looks like they might be getting back together.

 

I'm not planning on contacting this other band as I'd prefer to fly under the radar, and I've not promoted the name yet to any great extent, ie the youtube views are in the hundreds at best.

 

I guess I have three options

 

1. Continue to use  the name as my project is the only one with actual releases under the name, and if the other band gets in touch tell them to eff off.
2. Quietly forfeit the name and re-release the existing tracks under a totally different name
3. Pluralise the name - for example if the name was 'silver beatle' make it 'silver beatles' instead (that isn't the name in question by the way)

 

I'm tending towards the second option, but have yet to find a suitable replacement name.

 

What do others think?

 

Has anyone else had encountered a similar issue with their band name?

[Doctor J]

I would always concede to whoever had it first and move on. There are always other names and the potential for a mess is great if you persist with someone else's name. I would be embarrassed to add a "The" or an s, it always makes me think poorly of other bands who have done it.

[SH73]

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Edited Thursday at 21:24 by SH73
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[Beedster]

I was gutted when my band Led Zeppelin discover a namesake 😡

 

Move on, new name, it is only a word 👍

[Count Bassy]

To think that 20 years ago you could have another band of the same name 30 miles away and be none the wiser.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

True story — The band I formed and fronted from 1985-86 was called Nirvana. I guess Kurt had a copy of Love by The Cult as well.

[Norris]

There's another band called Cubic Nipple?! 😮

[paul_5]

23 minutes ago, Norris said:

There's another band called Cubic Nipple?! 😮

You're thinking of 'Squirt-it'...

[chris_b]

In the 70's we had a band called Ramrod.

 

I've heard of at least half a dozen other Ramrods.

 

As was mentioned earlier, bands with the same name weren't problem if they were working in different parts of the country.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

It wouldn't have been a problem in the days when being in a moderately successful band meant playing regular gigs in your local area, but these days we have websites, youtube, facebook, bandcamp, spotify etc to consider, although of those I'm only planning to use youtube and bandcamp to any extent, plus a website when I have more material.

[PaulWarning]

songs from another band with our name suddenly appeared on our Spotify page, I filled out a form and sent it off, credit where it's due, they soon sorted it out

 

edit, I think we were the originals, we started out in 1980

Edited yesterday at 00:30 by PaulWarning

[Woodwind]

21 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

songs from another band with our name suddenly appeared on our Spotify page, I filled out a form and sent it off, credit where it's due, they soon sorted it out

 

edit, I think we were the originals, we started out in 1980

 

 

I perform under my own name.

So too does a chap in the United States and yes we have the same name.

 

His Spotify and mine became permanently entangled and despite numerous attempts with Spotify and the aggregator I was using they were never truly separated.

 

[chris_b]

9 minutes ago, Woodwind said:

 

 

I perform under my own name.

So too does a chap in the United States and yes we have the same name.

 

His Spotify and mine became permanently entangled and despite numerous attempts with Spotify and the aggregator I was using they were never truly separated.

 

 

There is another bass player with my name in Australia! I discovered her when I was trying to set up my first email address. I think she plays classical and double bass, so our paths have never really crossed.

[super al]

1 hour ago, PaulWarning said:

songs from another band with our name suddenly appeared on our Spotify page, I filled out a form and sent it off, credit where it's due, they soon sorted it out

 

edit, I think we were the originals, we started out in 1980

The band I joined in 2022 actually started out in the mid 80s as Escapade (yes, it's a heavy metal band!).

They went their separate ways at the end of the 80s and then reformed with the original name in 2017. 

Recorded their first album in 2018 and then realised they couldn't release it on Distrokid under that name...thank god for that! I don't think I would've joined them if they were still called Escapade, seriously their days of escapades are looooonnnngggg behind them 😂

One of the early songs is about a pub we used to frequent that got demolished a few years back, it's called The Lion so they went with the Latin for lion which is far more palatable to bassists 👍🏻

[tauzero]

8 minutes ago, super al said:

One of the early songs is about a pub we used to frequent that got demolished a few years back, it's called The Lion so they went with the Latin for lion which is far more palatable to bassists 👍🏻

 

The Kings of Leo?

[Steve Browning]

4 hours ago, PaulWarning said:

 

edit, I think we were the originals, we started out in 1980

So you changed the name to the New Originals?

[Paul S]

It happened to the same band I was in twice.  We started off as a general rock covers band and came up with the name Waywood Sons.  After a while it became apparent that there was another higher profile band using this name, albeit after us.  We ended up morphing into a Bon Jovi tribute band calling ourselves 'Just Jovi' - and then discovered there was another one in the USA and, closer to home, Scotland.  In fact the Scottish band asked our singer Noel if he could dep one time  

[MrDinsdale]

We had a similar issue, took us ages to settle on a name, we got some logos made up etc.

 

The first of our gigs lined up was opening for an all day music festival, turns out the guy running it had invited an indie band from Manchester we'd missed when researching. He had to send them a really awkward message explaining the mix up. Felt horrible, they were apparently really excited albeit confused as to why a small indie band had been invited to a punk all-dayer. 🤣

[chrisba]

When we came up with our new band name, we checked everywhere we could like Spotify, iTunes, Twitter, Soundcloud and MySpace and eventually found a party covers band in Worthing or somewhere that had the same name and a page on Facebook. They didn't seem to have had any activity for 5+ years, and as an indie originals band in Reading, we were unlikely to cross paths, either in real life or online.

 

As coming up with the new name had been a long and occasionally fractious process, we decided to stick with the it. No regrets.

[super al]

7 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

The Kings of Leo?

With our hit 'sex on fur' (due to our west country accent 😂)

[SH73]

Iron Maiden one from 60's then Iron Maiden established in 1975

[Mykesbass]

13 hours ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

True story — The band I formed and fronted from 1985-86 was called Nirvana. I guess Kurt had a copy of Love by The Cult as well.

Or was a fan of the 1966 UK band by the same name.

[RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE]

Could be wrong , but with social media I imagine it'd be a lot harder to avoid these sort of problems . 
 

Two instances of band name issue spring to mind from the '90s ; 1) 2 bands called Wrathchild . Eventually became Wrathchild uk / Wrathchild America.

2) my friends band at the time got contacted by someone , who told them another more established band had the same name . Problem solved by my friend's band called " the  ----s " 

People moan more these days it seems , so maybe an entirely different name is the best way to go . ( until someone else has it  

[chris_b]

Sometimes it's just better to pick a new name. Status Quo was called Traffic until Steve Winwood decided to use that name.

[tauzero]

I checked as much as I could for our band name, Dirty Roses, and there's no duplicates, although there's a band of four good ol' boys from Bama called "Them Dirty Roses" (who look to be considerably busier than we are - six gigs in nine days in six different states).