This story in the Washington Post has been getting a lot of attention. The reporter convinced world-famous violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to play for 45 minutes in a busy Washington subway station, as an experiment to see if passersby would recognize his amazing talents and reward him appropriately. His take was a lowly $32, not counting $20 from a disgusted fan who recognized Bell and couldn’t believe others weren’t being more generous.
But there are questions as to whether the experiment was a good one. Why play in a subway entrance, where people are rushing to catch trains or off to their destinations? Why not in some place where people congregate, like a park, or even the platform itself, where people have time because they are waiting, not moving to and fro? Subway performer Natalia claims the problem is that Bell wasn’t “busking” — he didn’t interact with his audience and instead “buried his head in his instrument.”
Busking aside, I wonder if we can get a better sense of what Bell might have earned had he been performing in a better spot. I’m thinking that a simple poll could help us get a better answer:
Then it’s a matter of arithmetic to figure out how much money Bell could have made if all 1,097 passersby had time to stop and listen.