I know that in the long run, if you use an artist name, you'll need some kind of commercial protection for it. What I was wondering is, how soon should I realistically worry about it?
I was thinking of doing this right at the start, but the thing is, this stuff is costly, especially if you go to a specialized lawyer. My gut instinct would be to just wait for a while, and see how things are going first. Then if I should ever come to a point when I see some kind of success, I'd worry about it. But in the meantime, anyone else could trademark the same name and then give me trouble.

What's been the common experience with this - do artists realistically have some time before having to worry about this stuff, and has there ever been a case when an artist wanted to trademark their name but found that someone else had snagged it from them, forcing a rebrand? I'm confused as to how urgent this matter is, and how reasonable it would be to just wait for a (possibly long) time before worrying about this stuff and shelling out ungodly amounts of money for it.