The Application Formerly Known As NzbDrone - Sonarr

First off, we want to thank everyone for their input into our new name, we ended up with over 800 suggestions, which included some really great suggestions as well as some NSFW and some hilarious ones (don’t worry we’ll be sharing all of them with you). Again thank you for your input, it was invaluable.

I’d also like to thank… just kidding, this isn’t an awards show.

It took us a long time to decide on a name and the moral of the story is name things is hard, extremely hard, specially when it is something you care so deeply about.

Decision Criteria

  • Short and sweet - We aimed for 2 syllables, but would have accepted 3 if we found a perfect name
  • Simple to understand (staying away from things like “nzb”) I’m sure many of you tried to explain NzbDrone to friends and family, it was always a chore to get them interested for me because I’d spend half the time explaining what an nzb is and never got to talk about what it actually did.
  • Googleability, we wanted a name that was going to get us in the top 3 results without much trouble
  • Domain name - we wanted something short to type and easy to remember
  • Relevance - This wasn’t high on our list, but we did try to find a name that was relevant to what drone does

The Decision

After reading all 800+ names multiple times and tossing our own names into the ring, we went through several rounds of eliminations. Once we settled on a few possible names we would ask our close friends and family what they thought of each name and used their feedback to tweak names further.

We made the final decision yesterday around noon, and decided Sonarr is going to be NzbDrone’s new name. It was the first name that everyone really liked off the bat.

Why Sonarr?

It comes from sonar, it’s a way for us to see into total darkness and discover what’s out there.
We are also changing our old tag line “cut the cord” to “Dive in.” to be more in line with the ocean theme. The extra ‘r’ is there to help with domain, and searchability. also all the cool kids are doing it.

Next Steps

We couldn’t wait to tell the you guys about the name change so naturally we haven’t had time to actually re-brand anything yet. But over time you will see the following changes taking effect

  • All of our web properties *.nzbdrone.com domain and sub domains will start to automatically redirect to sonarr.tv
  • References to NzbDrone will start being replaced with Sonarr
  • As part of this migration all of our web properties will also be moving to HTTPS for improved security and privacy.

Update:

We created a mailing list that we will use to notify you about the binary name change (exe, windows service, folder paths and package are renamed from NznDrone to Sonarr). Please subscribe if you are interested to be notified.

Sonarr. Dive in.

3 Likes

Badassonarr! Awesonarr? (not as much…). I love the new name already. Simple, original, unique.

A great new name for a great product.

Well done guys.

So… in the end you chose what you wanted anyway? (I just can’t imagine that anyone submitted this name)

Not trying to sound negative, as I really don’t care what name you give it. I’ll keep using it because it’s the most awesome application in its category, with a very very distant second place to that beardy application. :smiley:

I’m still in denial, it’s like XBMC / Kodi all over again :wink:

Love the name, sounds way better then NZBDrone :slight_smile:

I like it

maybe xbmc should got you guys to come up with a name because Kodi sucks but sonarr is good stylistically having just the one r might be better but i see why you did it this way either way still sounds the same and overall a cool name now we just need a logo that will do it justice :smile:

I also like the name “Seeker” seeing as it seeks out episodes

I did a quick search and found that the term was already in use.

Hope this wasn’t trademarked, did you guys check?

Yes, there are no trademarks on the name.

Out of curiosity, what’s the plan with regard to existing installs? Will this require a reinstallation once the new name carries over to the program itself?

Our plan is to make it as seamless as possible, but we don’t have any specifics right now.

Hopefully it will come out soon :slight_smile: Cant wait for the new name already :stuck_out_tongue:

is there going to be a logo change?

Yes, thats the plan.

what about drone factory?

I’d like to remove it entirely and move to an option to choose any folder and import it and to enhance that further allow you to choose the series and episode(s) if its not able to detect it automatically.

With CDH drone factory is most just confusing and only adds the ability to deal with files not handled by CDH properly or grabbed via other means.

TL/DR no immediate plans to change the name, but the whole concept will likely change at some point (likely in v3 since it would be breaking).

Drone Factory does have its uses like in case you need to manually import an episode that you received elsewhere but if you can come up with something better than great

2 Likes

I’d like to say that I like the name. I also want to add some extra justification for the extra ‘r’.

“Seeing into total darkness… and keeps going”

That extra r says we’re not limited by old school technology.

:wink:

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We created a mailing list that we will use to notify you about the binary name change (exe, windows service, folder paths and package are renamed from NznDrone to Sonarr). Please subscribe if you are interested to be notified.