How NYC's subway buskers are faring

You learn a lot about people and crowd dynamics. Donations come in clusters; if a person sees someone else donate, he/she is more likely to. In an attempt to teach empathy, mothers often give cash to their three-year old kid to put in the violin case. The few who drop a $10 or $20 are often over 40 years old.

Twice I've had money stolen, both by dudes in their late teens or early twenties.

Sound definitely matters; you can't just "look good". Busking at the Ferry Building was a bad idea; no one can hear you. I'll never do that again.

High-density foot traffic is not always a good thing. In the evening rush hour, there are so many people obstructing view and making noise that I imagine it's difficult to appreciate the music by the time you've reached the fare gates. I believe that a medium traffic density works best where the sound can travel and there is always a direct line of sight between pedestrian and performer.

Sometimes the "great works" make poor busking choices. The Bach Chaconne is a great example.

Unsurprisingly, an ensemble with more performers earns more than a soloist. On August 20, 2014, we played the Mendelssohn Octet in Powell Station and collectively made $461.64 over 90 minutes, or $307.76 per hour. However, that's $38.47 per hour per person. I make $15-50 per hour solo. So I wonder where the diminishing returns begin, i.e. what ensemble size maximizes revenue per hour per person.

Is it scary? The scariest part was leaving the apartment that first day. Exiting the apartment door was the point of no return. "Okay, I have my jacket and shoes on and my violin, I might as well go on with it." That moment when, for the first time, alone, I plopped my music stand in the middle of Embarcadero Station was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. However, once you start playing, that's easy. The music is the easy part.

If you want to busk but are scared, I recommend going at a less busy time, e.g. Saturday morning at 10 am. Get used to the surroundings; embrace your anxiety. Once you're comfortable, try again next week at 2 pm.

I never carry cash so whenever a beggar asks, I say as much. One guy I encountered recently, jokingly said "I take credit cards too!" If he actually did, he would probably clean up.

He said the highest donation ever was 30000 jpy from a very drunken salaryman.

1. The people who made the music sold the rights to the music to the people who own the music, who then licensed the music to Spotify for an agreed-upon amount. Everyone agreed, presumably because this deal was beneficial for every party involved, which it most likely is otherwise Spotify wouldn't have been able to obtain licenses to almost every artist's music.

2. There will never be a shortage of art in this world, whether it's compensated monetarily or not. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't see a big need for artists to be compensated. If they stopped being compensated, we'd just be left with a few million artists of every medium producing art for free because that's what most artists do, whether it pays or not. If they weren't compensated, there would be less mass-market art, but since the quality of art is both subjective and relative, we'd probably all be just as satisfied with it.

If you stop compensating most professions, their output drops to zero. If you stop compensating artists, they just keep producing art. One could argue that we'd get even better art if we stopped compensating artists. We'd be left with nothing but the passionate ones.