DISQUS

Maurizio · 1 year ago

"So what can we learn from this slightly depressing little story?"
Maybe... that the vast majority of people that take the underground don't have the time to listen to buskers?

"If you expect to hear not-very-good musicians in the subway, even the world’s greatest violinist will sound like nothing special"
Let's put this another way... if you are hurrying to take the metro (quite possibly immersed in your own thought), will you be really paying attention to some busker and the quality of his performance? In those few seconds, what are the chances that you'll be so awed by the performace as to decide to stop by and risk being late at work?

An interesting experiment, all right, but experiments shoud have some scientific basis if you want to draw meaningful conclusions from them, and this one does not. It confirmed that children are quite curious, though :-)

RobinGood · 1 year ago

Can't argue with your logic.

In my personal view the article provides some possible inspiration about
what it takes to leave a trace online, for those thinking or considering of
following such a career.

Maurizio · 1 year ago

As a side note, I find it quite interesting (and a tribute to the insight of Master New Media.org's editors) that while the logic of Sonia Simone's article is flawed, the title and the introduction of this post tell a different and accurate story.

You cannot really deduct from this experiment that "if you expect to hear not-very-good musicians in the subway, even the world’s greatest violinist will sound like nothing special" .

I completely agree, though, that "...Talent And Ability Are Not Enough" and "..how you frame and position yourself has everything to do with how successful you end up to be" .

Ironically, in this case the "position" (in the geographical sense) was the key factor, and Ms. Simone completely overlooked it.

Had Mr. Bell played in a different public area, such as a park - where you can reasonably expect to find plenty of people willing to listen to street musician (and having the time to do so!) - the experiment would probably have been much more significant.

RobinGood · 1 year ago

You are very right.

Mark · 1 year ago

These discussion are on the top in these days because i have read the similar topic on my other favorite blogs. I think this is going to be something more and our thinking about internet marketing are fluctuating. Perhaps the reason behind this is, we are going to be more personal and niche specific so we want to go at core level of everything. Thanks for sharing a nice snippet.