Taking it to the Streets – and into the Store

The great thing about guitar players is that they’ll keep coming back to buy strings and picks. Now, as busking becomes more like a career choice than a temporary placeholder in musicians’ résumés, we can add batteries to that. Lots and lots of batteries.

The upcoming U.S. Census won’t be counting how many of the 143,694 working musicians there reportedly are in the country have been taking their talents to the streets, busking (the word derives from 17th-century French nautical term “busquer”, meaning “to seek,” or to cruise about or tack) on street corners and city parks. The term often evokes straggly haired low achievers with an open guitar case in front of them and a repertoire with at least three David Peel songs.

However, the reality is that many more musicians than one might realize look at busking as a legitimate way of making a living. It has its own educational (there’s an online School of Busking that’ll teach you the ropes for about $500), regulatory (the NYC Transit Authority holds annual auditions for permitting subway troubadours), and economic infrastructures (CNN Money optimistically reported one street duo earning $532 during a 12-and-a-half-hour day, which equals $21.22 per hour each for an annual salary of $44,137 per musician per 40-hour week).

What it also has is an increasingly broad array of MI products made with busking in mind, intended to give buskers both a competitive edge (it’s a very crowded market) and the ability to present their art and craft as tidily as if they were on a proper stage or in a recording studio. Roland and Yamaha are major players here, with seven of GeaRank’s top-10 list of battery powered guitar amps. Most of these will last buskers the better part of a 24-hour day, as will the huge array of pedals and loopers, most of which can take a 9-volt battery internally. Outdoor performance can be enhanced with a number of battery-powered effects, like Boss’ VE-1 Vocal Echo portable processor.

Guitar players have historically had the edge in the busker business, given the acoustic six-strings’ ease with which it can be chuck into its case when the local constabulary approaches. But we’ve seen everything else out on the street, including fiddles, mandolins, harps, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, percussion instruments from congas to flap boxes to entire drum kits, and no shortage of exotics like the didgeridoo or panpipes.

The MI Connection

That list is an invitation for MI stores to acknowledge and to varying extents accommodate the growing ranks of folks with names like Mandolin Mike, Mark “Porkchop” Holder, Velvet Thunder, and the Broadway Rapper (regulars on Nashville’s Lower Broadway).

They’re not coming in to buy $2,000 Les Pauls, but as a cohort, they’re a sales phenomenon to be reckoned with.

The busker market has been a significant one for years at World Music Nashville, on the city’s west side, where, says salesperson Corey Terrell, “Fishman is killing it,” referring to the brand’s Loudbox amplifiers – one of which was powering a keyboard busker in front of the shop one Saturday morning – that are popular with the area’s buskers. He noted in particular the Loudbox Mini/Mini Charge Deluxe carry bag, which lets buskers pack their entire kit besides their instrument in a single sack. (Possibly striking a subliminal note in street performers’ feral brain cores that understand they always have to be ready to move fast.)

It’s understandable why the busker business is so good in Nashville – a walk down the five blocks of the city’s entertainment district will reveal dozens of singer/instrumentalists crowding the sidewalks, where local busker blogs assert that amplifiers are necessary in order for street performers to compete with music blaring from the open-window clubs that line Broadway and with general street noise. In short, they’re no different than any other musician customer when it comes to where and how they shop. An alliance between buskers and MI retail is a perfect match of two sales-savvy cohorts. Shops elsewhere would do well to make the same connection.