Notes from the underground: what the ailing record industry can learn from a successful subway musician

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2003 by Nicholas Thompson

Number Two: Branch out

The beauty of the subway system is that it's about as free a market as there is. If I play good songs that I'm passionate about and that I have down cold, I make money. If I play junk, I don't make a dime. Naturally, though, I've had to learn a few things about how to place myself. The New York City subway has two good places for musicians to perform: the platforms where the trains stop, and the hallways leading between platforms and up to street level. The advantage of a hallway is that everyone passing by hears you for a few seconds; in a platform, you get far fewer people, but they hear you longer.

Hallways, it turns out, work great for playing music that's instantly familiar. In my favorite station there's frequently a talented hallway musician who plays Beatles songs, the kind of music that in three notes can jar a pleasant memory for a huge number of people. The instrumental guitar music I play, on the other hand, is a little unusual. To people who know the genre, it sounds like a poor man's version of Leo Kottke or Michael Hedges. To people who don't know the genre, it's a poor man's version of Duane Allman's Little Martha or Jimmy Page's Bron-y-aur. In any event, it's fairly complicated, and I literally don't make a penny when I try to play in the spot where the Beatles troubadour sings. But on a platform where I have roughly three minutes between trains coming, I can get folks' attention long enough to make some sales.

One might think that my only audience would be the Birkenstock nature-lovers and 14-year-old kids porting around their first guitars--and I do do well with that crowd. But I also do well with middle-aged black couples, 40-year-old white couples with kids, white blue-collar workers, and the Ecuadorian immigrants who sell jewelry in my favorite station. In fact, I have a much better chance of telling whether someone will like the music based on the way that they walk than based on their age, sex, or apparent income.

The music industry tends to divide both bands and audiences into broad, set formats: alt-music, hip-hop, and modern country. There is an obvious reality to these categories, but in truth, they exist largely for the benefit of record companies, which can then narrow and target their promotion efforts. Unfortunately, most bands and artists can't get to first base unless their music fits one of these formats, and there are many other bands and other types of music-like mine-that don't fit into any set genres. Many people's tastes stretch well beyond formats, and might they want to buy some of this music if they heard it. Indeed, it's almost guaranteed that somewhere between these formats, the next big thing in music is brewing. But figuring out how to profitably micro-market heterogeneous bands to scattered audiences is something the music industry has not yet figured out how to do.

Number Three: Embrace file-sharing

Fortunately, the Internet allows a wide audience to inexpensively sample a huge array of music. File-sharing networks like Kazaa, and artists who allow free downloads off their Web pages, are roughly like playing in the subway. The Net allows artists access to a substantial potential audience at almost no marginal cost, while providing listeners with short samples of a wide variety of artists and musical styles they may not hear on the radio with a low investment of time and almost no investment of money.