The New Busker Economy
How Crowdfunding Works Both Online and Offline
In July 2009, I boarded a plane to end my 5 year expatriated adventures in India and rejoin corporate America. It was a scary move. I couldn't survive anymore on $167 per month and I had no income…
While looking for work, I did one of the most gutsy things I have ever done.
I spent my last $2 and boarded the bus for downtown with no way home and only a prayer of success. The next couple months I paid my rent busking atthe pianos on the 16th Street mall in downtown Denver.
More than just paying rent, I got an education on practical economics far beyond the theories of pristine academia. I watched money change hands because people cared. It continues to haunt me in every business I build.
The lessons learned in busking have proved more valuable than Harvard business school.
I learned how crowdfunding works and why…
While your business may not be music the principles of Busker Economics still play a part in your industry as well. I didn't realize this until I restarted my career in web technology. But before I can apply these lessons generally I need to explain busking to the non-busker.
A Day in the Life of a Busker
One of my best friends on the street, Chainsmoker the Magnificent, taught me a lot about busking in general and busking in Denver specifically.
Chainsmoker has been making a decent living on the street performing illusions and telling stories for nearly a decade since he moved to Denver from Dublin. He has become an icon in the downtown Denver with his simple charm and flirty humor.
He focuses on keeping his shows short and remind people often that his amazing squeaky bucket is sitting right in front of him just waiting for their patronage.
He usually ends his show by taking out a cigarette and announcing in his beautiful Irish lilt, “My next show begins in this long…”
Chainsmoker lights up his cigarette and puff away while he thanks people for their donations. It’s personal and memorable. But most importantly, it gives his show a chance to breath. The memory sets into the sub-conscious of his audience and they put a little thanks in his bucket.
This break from the man-on-stage persona gives people a glimpse into the man behind the act. And Chainsmoker makes more money flirting with his audience than simply gearing up for his next show…
But, there is more to his little dialogue than mere pleasantries. Even the breaks are carefully scripted to build the persona he is trying to portray. Every bit adds to the entertainment value of his character. Every wink and tease is about endearing his audience and creating memories.
I remember talking to Chainsmoker one day about the persona that we create to entertain our crowds. He told me that the flirting was very much an act. He actually prefers brainy conversation to the flirtation, but the act required a bit of a different personality.
This little insight changed more of my understanding than years of practical experience in online marketing. As a Fame Strategist and Business Architect, my job is to help grow businesses larger than the personality that represents them.
Most successful entertainers are not just the amazing emotive power we see in public but deep thinkers who continually hone their focus of communication with treasured fans.
I’m always impressed by the depth of business-sense of successful celebrities. Whether it’s Sir-Mix-A-Lot, Lucille Ball, Ric Viers, Imogin Heap or Valery Gergiev — they all think about their communication and value their audience with a great deal of awe and respect.
The quickest way to learn this interactive power is to practice busking for a day. Buskers teach us about how entertainment economics really works. The context is simple and their insights profound.
Busking is all about turning heads and opening wallets. It is completely based on altruism. People give money for moments they are already receiving for free.
For each busker, the goal is to inspire their audience to get caught up in appreciation for that moment of life. It’s hard to compare this performance to any other stage or the art form. There are no smoke and mirrors on the streets, just people connecting over an inspiring moment that will soon be immortalized in memory of chance meeting.
It is a perfect mixture of street-smart, business-savvy planning, and on-stage charm. Every performer has a different way of drawing the crowd. Every performer has a slightly different crowd to draw in.
For me, it’s throwing myself into throaty renditions of 70–80's rock ballads while pounding the piano with vigor. Chainsmoker focuses on cheeky humor with over-the-top flirtation and witty remarks. For others, it is their costume, mannerisms, gentility, klutziness or pure romance of the moment.
Turning heads is only half the battle.
And really, it’s the easy half…
The real goal of busking is money in the hat. More money equals another day at the office. Less money equals finding another job.This simple economics is so profoundly human that we can’t help feel some draw of connection even from a distance.
Chainsmoker’s success is largely due to how he reminds his audience of the ease of donation. He never lets his audience go for more than 45 seconds without a reminder of his amazing squeaky bucket. We see televangelists using the same technique to line their pockets. It works well.
As a singer, I find this principle challenging to work into my act on the street. Instead of directly asking I learned to use subtle visual cues. I quickly learned to fill my hat with primer change as a way to suggest donations. I put at least one $20 bill, $10 bill, and $5 bill then several $1 bills along with loose change to weight down the cash so it doesn't blow away.
It is amazing the difference a primed hat makes. It’s like asking for a higher donations without ever saying a word. The largest bill in my hat was always the largest donation I received that day. If I only had a $5 bill in my hat no one gave $10. If I only had a $10 nobody gave a $20…
I talked to other buskers about my discovery. Many were afraid someone would stealing their hat. However, I learned that having a half full hat that looked like $50 of petty cash was the easiest way to keep a crowd gathered. They reasoned I must be pretty good if people were throwing that much money at me.
Having the gathered crowd keeps people from running up and trying to steal something in front of so many eyeballs. The only people I knew to get their hats stolen where those who didn't have consistent crowds gathered round.
The idea of safety in numbers became another facet in my busker economy. Perhaps this is another reason why buskers are not shy to shout out with circus lingo, “Step right up folks!”
Musician starve because we don’t value our own music and we won’t ask for money to support our art. We have hijacked our own industry!
This timidity is killing the entertainment industry because we don’t view our contribution to society as valuable art. We consider ourselves unworthy. When we devalue ourselves it is hard to ask anyone to value us. After degrading ourselves, it seems strange to get upset when people don’t give us money for our work.
In order to reverse this decline we have to reconnect with the crowd. Amanda Palmer highlights this in a TED talk about her approach to asking. She relates busking to crowd surfing since both have to do with falling into the hands of your fans and letting them hold you.
She goes further to share how her days as a busking statue lead to her success as the most funded music campaign ever on KickStarter. It emboldened her to ask without shame for $100,000 to fund her next album. She was so persuasive with her request that she raised over $1.2 million in donation.
Amanda’s main point to the TED audience was how we miss out on so much magic in the world when we are afraid to ask our fans to join in. We loose the chance to see society in action when we refuse to ask. That fear becomes the force turning our face away from the beautiful flowers in front of us.
Amanda is exactly right.
We don’t think enough about asking for help.
The only way to start valuing music again is to get back to Busker Economics. We have to begin to value connections between artist and patron. We have to value the art and highlight the value it adds to our audience’s lives. We have to learn that asking for remuneration for our art is not a snooty thing but a natural part of presenting the art to the world.
This holds true in other businesses too. We forget the intrinsic value of our product. The big changes happen when we start valuing our product and the people that connect with us. Devaluing ourselves not only devalues us, it also devalues our customers. If we change to providing something of value we communicate that our customers are more valuable still.
Learning the New Busker Economy
Enter Jack Conte and his crowdfunding platform Patreon
Jack started a business to scratch his own itch. He didn't set out expecting to build a music funding service that would payout over $1 million per month to artists and creatives. It’s done by a simple model very similar to the busker’s hat. And it works!!!
Jack’s system works just like a busker’s hat. People pay for art out of the goodness of their heart. Every time an artist posts a video or writes a blog article their patrons are notified and small contributions fill the hat to overflowing. Several micro celebrities now make over $100k per year purely in donations.
YouTube has followed Patreon’s lead by integrating tipping directly into their platform. While Patreon still offers a little better control, this widespread adoption is proof that altruistic busker economics really works.
Now we are beginning to see a pendulum swing again towards altruistic economics. Crowdfunding is in the news a lot. It baffles economists and seasoned business professionals. It seems to contradict greed-based capitalism as a completely alternate sustainable economic model.
Life After Busking
When the weather turned cold I returned to an indoor gig building a student portal for the largest art college in Colorado. That parleyed into a very lucrative career achitecting major business applications for foreclosure auditing, identity management, shareholder investment reporting and online M&A payout systems.
Even though I spend very little of my time busking today, I still look back at those days with amazement at how much I learned. Busking is a forgotten piece of our economy that weathers almost every economic condition.
As a Business Architect, I look at myself as an artist bringing the social connections I found in busking to more established business models. I’m often reminded of my father’s counsel on what to charge and why. He has told me over 100 times: “You are worth whatever you ask as long as you deliver everything you promise.”
This holds true in art as much as business consulting.
What busking teaches about entertaining and encouraging audiences is a lesson that every professional should take note. It’s lesson is twofold:
Value yourself.
Value your audience.
In modern day compartmentalized advertising and business strategies that rely on numbers instead of face-to-face interactions, it is important to remember that business is a very human thing.
Once we realize we are making human life better it changes what we consider investing to be. Investing in life is always more rewarding than investing in raw numbers.
Busking reminds us that you don’t have to be greedy to be profitable and that success is more about connecting people to their future than making sure our money jar is stuffed. If you are good at investing in people it will never be very hard for people to find a reason to invest in you.
Rods Bobavich is a Music Producer, Fame Economist, Technology Strategist, and Business Architect involved with many companies and individuals at varying levels of responsibility. To find out more reach out via Twitter @theBobavich.
