Chester French Network Their Music
Chester French is a talented two-man show. Let’s hear some of their rock music, and then talk about how they network their way to the fans:
The song you’ve just heard is titled “She loves everybody”. While this song helped them reach out to a larger audience, it wasn’t a huge hit, and wasn’t enough to promote their debut album “Love the Future”.
Traditional musicians rely on their record company to promote their act by using Public Relations offices, posters in record stores, etc.
But D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey took a different path: they’re promoting their music through networking.
The band has set up a website that features various information about the band, news about shows, etc. The added value comes from their activity on the site. They update their blog quite frequently: they release a post approximately every two to three days.
They’re also active on MySpace, Facebook and and other social networks. All these sites give samples of their music, and ask you to further engage with the band. With a unique name as Chester French, it’ll be easy to find them online. In some cases it isn’t that simple to search people on social sites.
They offer the visitors to join their VIP service. These VIP members get free copies of their music so that they will be “ambassadors” of Chester French, and spread their music. They use SalesForce to manage their network of fans. Also here, up to date tools are utilized…
The most fascinating part of their networking is their personal responses to emails from fans. In this article in the Gadgetwise blog (under NY Times), Wallach describes how he personally networks with the fans:
“We respond to every single email we get,” he said. “I do an hour in the morning and an hour at night. A lot of them are just, ‘I wish you’d come to my city,’ and we’ll write back, ‘Us, too.’ We try to keep it personal and intimate. So it’s not just ‘Dear Friend.’ It’ll be, ‘Dear Paul, thank you for coming to see us in Baton Rouge. We’d really like your ideas for how we can spread our music around in Baton Rouge.’”
This way of promoting music via social networks and personal communication with fans is gaining traction, and it’s an excellent example of how networking is used in the entertainment industry. Networking isn’t exclusive to business 
