Music project, naming questions

Hi there, I have a judicial question: A friend and I finally decided on a name for our music project. We just record some selfwritten songs and put them online on our webpage. We also want to put the songs on Jamendo and the like. However, a couple of days I realized that there is a German cover band with the same name. They are not that famous I guess, maybe in their region. The music they cover is also quite different to our music. Since I am German, and our webpage is hosted under a .de domain, I was wondering, if having the same name is a problem. What do you think? I might add, that the friend who is also involved in the project is Italian and that we both stay at the Netherlands at the moment (although I am still registered in Germany). Any input here from you would be great! Thanks, fladd

If they are not famous, then it doesn't matter. I have a band called The Wildcards, and there are a whole slew of "Wildcards" here in the US and around the world. None of us are famous yet, so it doesn't really matter. Just don't name your project The Rolling Stones or anything like that! :)

But what about using stuff like Myspace, Virb, Jamendo, Facebook pages? Is this also okay in this case? (I also realized that there is a band from NY on facebook pages which has the same name). Regards, fladd

Any ideas on that?

I agree with the previous responses in that you probably don't need to worry about judicial issues at this point. But if you are concerned that your project's name might lead to confusion with others that are out there, then I recommend changing the name now rather than doing it later, after you have already set up the Facebook, Myspace, etc.