After listening to NPR’s Planet Money podcast, “Episode #501: Rule Breakders“, I decided to get in touch with them to see if they’d run a story about buskers. The below email is what I sent them. It might bore some of you, and infuriate others. What do you think, did I make a mistake?

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Dear Planet Money producers,
[deleted fan comments]

JAKARTA’S OTHER TRAFFIC ECONOMY
I’ve been inspired to reach out to you because of your recent episode on “Rule Breakers.” While filming in Jakarta we met these anarchic, suspicious but handsome kids in their late teens who’d jump on and off busses, singing funny songs about marriage and love and death and traffic, in return for donations. They were earning enough for themselves, their girlfriends and their children (yes, these were busking teenagers with infant kids), through busking.

On our travels, we filmed and interviewed dancing slum kids in Jaipur. We filmed a clown family that lived in a favela on the outskirts of Lima, who believed just as strongly as the conservatory graduates in NYC that busking is an important artistic and cultural heritage. We filmed a handless clay sculptor in Hong Kong, an “upside down man” in Vienna, sword swallowers, contortionists, dancers, mimes, human statues, Guinness World Record holders and musicians of all flavours in 40 cities on 5 continents.

And despite huge personal differences, they are all a part of the most unique of the artistic economies: one that is rational, Darwinian and completely misunderstood.

THE MONEY
Some make barely anything, and others are going home with hundreds of dollars/euros/pounds for a few hours’ work, depending on skill, style, appearance, technique, pacing, placement and, most of all, knowledge of the market. I’ve seen incredibly talented artists fail to connect with people’s hearts or wallets, and other buskers armed just with their charm and experience, who regularly take home a sack of coins and bills.

What I love most about this is that the buskers who do well are not born into it. It doesn’t matter where they went to school, or who their parents are, or their GPA score, or their zip code, or their race, nationality, class or physical size. It’s about how much they’ve learned on the street, how well they understand their consumers’ needs, and how well they put that knowledge into practice day by day. And it’s completely Darwinian: only the most able to adapt survive.

THE ONLY RATIONAL ART MARKET
It is an artistic market that is universally undervalued by the mainstream. And yet you could argue that a busker’s investors are far more rational than those who invest in other artists: a busker’s audience has not been swayed by a savvy press department, the cult of celebrity or the personal tastes of art critics, nor by lavish surroundings or glitter or fireworks or massive PA systems.

Instead, people choose how much a busker’s show is worth to them based on their own experience, their own values. Those who donate out of a sense of social good tend to drop a quarter. Those who are completely taken by the performance can drop tens (or more…even underwear and phone numbers). The amount buskers make somewhat depends on the economy on the whole, tourism (the exchange rate comes into play), and the fully-informed decisions of their audience. Product first, then a payment based on personal judgment of worth.

AN IGNORED MARKET
This is a bit off topic, but it is interesting that the size, scale and impact of this market has never been properly researched by academics. This is strange — in thousands of years of having buskers spread cultures around the world (across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas), no sociologist, anthropologist, city planner, musicologist or any other academic has ever done a “proper” study on the effect that busking has had on a population, or on tourism, or business, or the local art scene.

And yet it is the single most frequent and most widely seen demonstration of the human spirit on the face of the planet, occurring as it does in almost all the busiest parts of all the major urban areas in every country. This is a format that predates bars, clubs, radio, CDs, concert halls etc, and it reaches a more diverse audience than any of the above ever could. And yet it’s largely ignored by academics.

A MISUNDERSTOOD MARKET
Buskers are at best seen as failed artists, at worst as beggars and opportunists. Regardless of which of these one believes, people almost universally think that busking is always about money. And yet, there are few if any artists that you or I know about who do not sell their art, through tickets, album sales, record deals, sponsorships, merchandise or ad sales. They all have their price. So why is it that people see buskers as “doing it for the money”, when the money is optional, and left up to the whims of the consumer?

THE PERFECT WORKFORCE
We interviewed a girl in Athens (video below) who’d fallen in love with an American variety artist. She hated that he was American, but loved his lifestyle and values, and ended up quitting her respectable job as a manager in a company, to move in with him in his van. I asked her how she was dealing with this new lack of security, and she said “I totally disagree with you. Busking is more secure than anything else”.

This was during the Greek crash. Everyone else was losing their pensions and having their wages cut. And yet she and her busker partner could move anywhere they wanted. Unlike a doctor or teacher who would be out of work when they arrived somewhere new, a busker is permanently employed by the local population. What other workforce is as free?

THE BUSKING PROJECT
We may have done more widespread research on this topic than perhaps anyone else has done before, filming and interviewing buskers in 10 languages over hundreds of hours in 40 cities on 5 continents. Our credentials are perhaps best summed up by saying we’ve been interviewed for pieces in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the BBC, the Guardian and various other publications in a dozen countries.

But regardless of whether you feature us in an article, I would just love for there to be a serious piece done on busking. I hate it when programs only focus on the money, because busking is so much more than that. And yet, it would be nice to see the money side presented well…perhaps for the first time in any media outlet!

You guys seem to be the people who’d do that.

OOOHH, AND CELEBRITIES!
I almost forgot. Glen Hansard is a big fan of NPR, and of us, and is hugely proud of his busking days. But there are tons of celebrities you perhaps don’t know started their careers busking: Robin Williams (variety act), Justin Bieber (cute kid on guitar), Kanye West (used to do karate on the street as a kid in China), Amanda Fucking Palmer (human statue), Norah Jones, Edith Piaf, Tracy Chapman, Rod Stewart, Pierce Brosnan (fire breather), Louis Armstrong, Eddie Izzard…even Benjamin Franklin (poet) gave it a go until his Dad told him to stop.

So please do a story on busking. Feel free to check out more info, and to get in touch.

Thanks for improving my evenings, twice a week!

Nick Broad, your fan, and busker advocate