Busking: The Invisible Business

Busking is everywhere, but as a business is invisible. At its most basic level, a busker is a street performer who sets up in a public place and performs for free, accepting donations. If you’ve ever seen someone playing a guitar with coins and bills building up in their case, you’ve seen a busker.

Busking is a performance based profession. Music is one form, circus skills like juggling or acrobatics is another, and of course the classic French Mime. If you can provide entertainment real time, you can busk.

Most major cities require buskers to register and get a license. It’s a way to legitimize the sales of any goods (such as CD’s) and to protect the public. As the performer’s craft grows, they can begin to travel from city to city, and even participate in Buskers Festivals around the world where they can earn a substantial living.

The best Buskers perform their act - which they’ve polished over the years - completely for free. They entertain and engage with their audience, and ask for a donation. Some may do this passively. The guitar player with the open case plays music and collects donations of various sizes passively. Other performers in Busker Festivals will build up the energy of the crowd (to attract a bigger crowd) perform, lead to a climax, and specifically ask for the donation before their final act.

No everyone will donate - not everyone need to. The performer gives away entertainment freely, and the community they entertained will support them. Nobody gets rich in the bank account, but some get experience-rich by getting to travel the world.

Busking is a profession where the performer received payment based on the value they give upfront - the entertainment they provide. They bump up their revenues by asking for a donation (a call to action), and thank the people who support them. It’s a very personal transaction - particularly in the age of YouTube where so much entertainment can be consumed completely for free.

Busking is an industry that will never be giant, but it will also never be displaced. There’s no other form of entertainment that will rise up to take it’s place. The Festivals that rise up around the talent of Buskers is a temporary transformation of a city square. Not unlike a bottle of wine, it is something unique, that exists for a brief time, and then is gone. It’s a special event that breaks the audience away from their regular reality for a short time in a communal way.

The Buskers that are successful have one thing in common with professional sales people - and that is that they truly understand what their audience/customers want. They want to be lead through and experience, captivated, and entertained. They are immediately successful, or they immediately are not. From this experience, they can build up a new act over time and entertain a broader audience in a deeper way.