What's the value of a busker for a city?

Sean Regan (Flute Loops), an Irish beatboxing flute player that has been busking for over a decade, sent me this email in May:

It's vulgar to measure a countercultural activity by its financial value to others, but this is the language city managers understand, which makes it a line of thinking we should at least explore.

So, Sean prompted an AI chatbot to estimate how much buskers are worth to Dublin, Ireland, a city that has a long and impressive busking history. First, the chatbot checked the most popular busking artists/platforms from Dublin and calculated their social reach:

Allie Sherlock

Jacob Koopman

Dublin City Today

TOTAL Monthly Views: Approximately 4.6 million

The chatbot then multiplied those monthly views by the average amount that marketers pay for exposure (the going rate for 1000 views is about €9.68), giving an estimate that just these three sources give Dublin approximately €43,000 a month—over €500,000 a year—in free online advertising.

You could pick apart this logic. Not all of these buskers' videos include shots of Dublin. Not every viewer will know where the buskers are standing. However, the buskers are giving much more than mere global exposure. They are also branding the city as a lively cultural hub. So, according to the chatbot, those 4.6 million views per month would also likely lead to more tourists.

The average Dublin tourist spends around €800 EUR, so those 1,100 tourists would be worth €880,000 a year.

Again, you could pick apart that logic. The people watching those videos are following the artists they like, not looking for travel advice. However, the joy these buskers give in-person passersby will inspire them to come back for a second visit. I was browsing Trip Advisor reviews for a study we did in 2018, and noticed that several people said that they'd returned to Galway in later trips specifically because they wanted to see the buskers again—one of them even coming from as far as Australia.

Also, the buskers are also increasing how much visitors spend. In that 2018 study I mentioned, we ended up showing that if a TripAdvisor review in Galway mentioned the buskers, there was a 0% chance that review was one-star and far less likely to be 2-stars or 3-stars. Here’s a table we made:

This is important, because higher TripAdvisor review scores lead to more visitors and enable businesses to raise their prices. It may be that Galway’s thriving busking scene gives local bars and restaurants the ability to charge more for beers and coffees.

Again, there’s a flaw in this logic: just because a nearby tourism destination has better reviews, that doesn’t necessarily mean local businesses can charge more. However, there’s yet another thing buskers do for local businesses: they also increase the “dwell time” of their audience members, meaning the amount of time people spend in town.

One study showed that if you can extend the amount of time someone spends in town by two hours they’ll double how much they spend on food and drink. My 2018 research found multiple TripAdvisor reviewers saying that the only reason to visit an area (that was otherwise just a "tourist trap") was to buy a drink or a sandwich and spend a few hours watching the street performers outside.

So, to work out a busker’s true value to a city, you’d have to add all those elements together:

…and the real value of Dublin’s buskers are likely worth millions of euros a year to the city (and hundreds of thousands in taxes).

Any city with a thriving busking ecosystem could take all the money it earns from it to hire a small team dedicated to getting to know their local street performers, making sure the buskers have everything they need to keep performing, sorting out disputes with local businesses, paying for soundproofing measures so that residents or businesses next to popular pitches are taken care of—and still make a tidy profit.

Hopefully the point is clear, but I'll say it anyway:

Cities are receiving a vast financial gift from their busking communities.

Unfortunately, the value of that gift has never been quantified, so cities tend to treat their local buskers like shit.

If any of you are looking for a subject for your PhD, go out and put a figure on how much a thriving busking ecosystem is worth, both to local businesses and the city itself.

Just one example of the positive impact such research could have: putting an end to the idea that local rate-paying businesses should have a louder voice than buskers, when considering how busking programs are managed.

Every week I send out a bunch of stories I'm not featuring elsewhere: all the (English language) news from the world of busking in one place:

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It's a slightly old story, but in researching this article I discovered that Dublin has just given the green light to apartments going up right on Grafton Street, the city's most popular busking hotspot. The fears are that this will cause an increase in noise complaints against buskers, and might lead to a ban on amplification.

Staying in Ireland, a busker called Stephen Barry was singing a song from Phantom of the Opera in Covent Garden. A woman in the crowd suggested a song. He reluctantly agreed. She joined him—and turned out to be Celinde Schoenmaker, one of the stars of Phantom of the Opera.

An American busker, Blake Robert, has given himself the challenge of performing in the UK until he's earned enough to fly home. His first day out netted him £5 after food/shelter was paid for.

The Musicians Union in the UK has put together a handy guide for how to busk in the country, detailing the rules and regulations governing street performance in various regions and cities.

Talking of regulations: remember Markus K, the guy I posted about getting stopped by Bulgarian police for not having a permit, the moment he got his first tip? His bad luck has continued: he was just deported from Macao to Mainland China for busking.

An oddity: an Inverness busker is being protected by a sign reading, "Mr John Cassey is the only busker authorised by the private traders to busk in this private section of the market.” Apparently, this was a favour by the local traders to stop the musician being bullied by another street performer. It’s perhaps the weirdest sign I’ve ever seen a busker use.