23 years is a quite a long time and I had never thought that this little project I was starting in 2000, would grow into what it is today — it has been an amazing journey with many ups and downs. Despite many early hardships, I’m extremely happy that I stuck with it and nurtured the project into an important resource for the internet today.
With that in mind, I feel compelled to tell a story of where the name MusicBrainz came from and how July 17, 2000 was the first day that the name has ever been uttered and the domain was registered seconds later.
During this time, I was living in a party household and we were having yet another party — as you do on a Monday evening, right? I was sitting next to my friend Billy when I mentioned that I wanted to create a new project, but that I was lacking a good name for it. He asked me: “What will this project do?”
And I started explaining my vision for the project and after finishing my summary for the idea I said: “… a project about music that brings together many people. … many brains around around the world. Something like MusicBrains!”
I sat bolt upright and then literally jumped up and left Billy sitting on the couch wondering what has just happened. I ran to my computer and checked to see if MusicBrains.org was taken, but then realized that name was great, but it needed a little… something. I didn’t search for musicbrains, my fingers simply typed musicbrainz, without a conscious thought about the z.
The domain was available, so I registered it! I returned to the party, happy to have solved a tricky problem.
Bonus fact: I had just been laid off from my dot com gig, so money was short. I decided to not get musicbrainz.com, figuring that I would register it later if that was going to be needed. But no, in the era of domain squatters, musicbrainz.com was registered shortly after the .org version. With the advent of Google, this was never a problem, except for the number of domain squatters who have tried to sell me this domain over the years. I’m happy knowing that all of their money was 100% wasted. 🙂
So cool ruaok!! Happy birthday MB!