I know next to nothing about .com domain sales. So my comments are just speculation, but my first thoughts are...
- Online music sales surpassed physical music sales this year for the first time ever.
- The online music industry is already a $8.6B industry and still growing at double digit figures annually.
- There are a number of big, wealthy, online players moving into this area
To me it has all the hallmarks of being a BIG domain sale.
As for whether it will be a record, well online music sales are bigger than online porn revenues so I think it has a reasonable chance that it could be.
$15 million+ for a sustainable competitive advantage in a soon to be $10B+ online music industry. I don't think that's unreasonable...
Especially when you have the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc regularly throwing millions at start ups to try and stay ahead of each other. I don't think it's hard to believe they might also choose to throw a few millions at something like this as a bit of a speculative play. And to be frank if any two of the major parties rock up at the auction it could have the potential to produce a price never seen before in the domaining industry.