Introduction: The Problem With over 4.5 million people commuting on the New York subways daily, New York subway stations constitute a vibrant stage for musical performances. The NYC subway opened in 1904, and immigrants brought their street performing traditions to this new venue from the start. This popular tradition lives on today and is more alive than ever underground. New York City subway musicians positively impact the lives of New York commuters and add tremendous value to the city: they shape the city’s spirit, attract tourists, and create accessible public art for everyone. However, the current environment is lacking an adequate support system for these musicians; instead of their art being received with respect and peace, NYC subway musicians frequently perform in an atmosphere of conflicting cultural codes, tension, and misunderstanding by the public and by the police. While in the past decade New York has enjoyed a surge in tourism from other countries and states, our sample of personal interviews reveals that individuals within this dense and varied crowd have little idea of who these performers are, what their role in this public space is, and what the rules are for performing. Most of the NYC subway performers are incredibly talented and experienced musicians who often perform outside the subway system as well. Many performers use the subway as a space to practice their art and connect to people they might not otherwise encounter. Yet although their activities are now lawful, there is still a public perception that these buskers are doing something wrong; many commuters remain unaware of the incredible quality of work they have access to on their daily commute. Some performers have been sanctioned by Music Under New York (MUNY), a government organization. While other performers are not officially supported, they are officially allowed to play in the subways if they observe certain restrictions of volume and behavior. Yet issues with the police persist and have become increasingly visible. Recently, considerable public interest was aroused when a video of the arrest of guitarist Adam Kaleen in Brooklyn went viral (October 2014). NYC subway musicians bring tremendous value to New York, and subway.
Introduction: The Problem With over 4.5 million people commuting on the New York subways daily, New York subway stations constitute a vibrant stage for musical performances. The NYC subway opened in 1904, and immigrants brought their street performing traditions to this new venue from the start. This popular tradition lives on today and is more alive than ever underground. New York City subway musicians positively impact the lives of New York commuters and add tremendous value to the city: they shape the city’s spirit, attract tourists, and create accessible public art for everyone. However, the current environment is lacking an adequate support system for these musicians; instead of their art being received with respect and peace, NYC subway musicians frequently perform in an atmosphere of conflicting cultural codes, tension, and misunderstanding by the public and by the police. While in the past decade New York has enjoyed a surge in tourism from other countries and states, our sample of personal interviews reveals that individuals within this dense and varied crowd have little idea of who these performers are, what their role in this public space is, and what the rules are for performing.
Most of the NYC subway performers are incredibly talented and experienced musicians who often perform outside the subway system as well. Many performers use the subway as a space to practice their art and connect to people they might not otherwise encounter. Yet although their activities are now lawful, there is still a public perception that these buskers are doing something wrong; many commuters remain unaware of the incredible quality of work they have access to on their daily commute. Some performers have been sanctioned by Music Under New York (MUNY), a government organization. While other performers are not officially supported, they are officially allowed to play in the subways if they observe certain restrictions of volume and behavior. Yet issues with the police persist and have become increasingly visible. Recently, considerable public interest was aroused when a video of the arrest of guitarist Adam Kaleen in Brooklyn went viral (October 2014). NYC subway musicians bring tremendous value to New York, and subway.
Value Proposition Subway Beats will create value by strengthening the existing connections amongst multiple stakeholders in the busker community, including commuters, government officials (i.e. police) and most importantly the artists themselves. In an effort to shift the current public perception of buskers, our initiative will highlight the incredible talents and stories of New York City subway performers through city wide engagement. This multi-tiered and integrated platform will benefit and link commuters, security officials, and buskers in the following ways:
(1) Interactive Storytelling: Connecting Commuters (3) Celebrating Busker Traditions: Showcasing and Buskers Artists Subway Beats emphasizes storytelling as an opportunity to alter the current assumptions of who these artists are and share a holistic view of the artist with the public. By revealing more than their incredible talents, the buskers can connect more deeply with the audience and encourage commuters to become a part of their following. Utilizing augmented reality (AR) technology to merge the online and offline, Subway Beats will develop a platform that engages the commuter through a channel that can be easily adopted.
Supported by unspoken rules and a code of solidarity, the busker community is filled with artists who value their craft and want to protect the culture of street performing. Our interviews and informal conversations show that a strong foundation exists, but due to vast interest and numbers, the community can be splintered. Subway Beats will organize busker performances into a more cohesive festival, with a schedule that can be accessed online. We recognize the unique idiosyncrasies of the busker community and while we strive to protect the tradition, the festival will give greater visibility to talents that might not have had such an extensive reach.
(2) Immersive Experience: Engaging Commuters with New York City Artists
Building upon the already vibrant busker community and its offerings, we created a strategic campaign that features the creative, inspired, and spontaneous acts of buskers who utilize the streets of New York as their personal stage every day. We designed a system that recognizes, celebrates, and rewards the value that buskers add to New York City by embodying the spirit of the “lively artist�, which has made the city a renowned international artistic hub.
With city supported programs such as MUNY, Made in NY and Make Music NY making a strong impact on the local and tourist experience, there is a demonstrated need to re-engage New Yorkers and visitors in the culture that makes the city unique and special. Subway Beats will promote the buskers, an underserved market in terms of governmental support, and by offering the artists greater visibility and support, we invite commuters to break out of their normal routine, pause and become a part of the creative energy bustling through the streets and subways of New York. Subway Beats will create interactive screens on the subway platforms that feature camera feeds of the performances occurring in other subway stations. Similarly to the MTA information screens, the touchscreen panels will also be branded by our partners and feature their advertisements. By offering a visual opportunity to view buskers live from all over the city, commuters are able to enjoy the artistic talent already embedded in NYC’s identity.
Historical Landscape There has been a longstanding misunderstanding of the laws around street and subway performing, even among law enforcement officials. This misunderstanding has led to friction between law enforcement/ government and the performers, as well as sometimes between performers and commuters. This confusion originates from the earliest days of government authorities never knowing exactly what to make of street performing and seeing its spontaneity as a threat to law and order.
Strategic Partnerships In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia called the performers beggars (he defended the poor and disapproved of panhandling), and he made it illegal to perform in New York’s public areas. Although street performing was allowed once again after 1970, subway performances were illegal until the 1980s. However, despite this legislation, artists still expressed themselves underground and performed whenever they could. Performers saw this as a movement to reclaim public space and believed music could change social conditions, and the 1960s subways were colored by African American and Italian doowop performers. This illegal underground performance movement finally achieved legitimacy in 1987, with the creation of an official “Music Under New York” (MUNY) program.
Subway Beats places great importance on developing strategic alliances with companies who share our brand’s pillars and values. We seek partners who are interested in being more than a monetary sponsor, but believe in making a deep impact in the busker community and utilizing art to transform public space. Subway Beats plans to collaborate partners who have been prominent in the subway busker space or in improving the New York experience. Some of these primary partners would include MUNY, Make Music New York, MTA, and NY Tourism/NYC.gov.
The city established MUNY as a pilot program to highlight its vibrant and extensive history of performing arts and to give some order to the city’s underground music scene. The program has become well established, and musicians -- many of them professional and successful performers-- send CDs at the beginning of the year, which are vetted by a panel of musicians, music-industry authorities, and MTA employees. New York City’s Metro Transit Authority invites the selected musicians to tryouts at Grand Central Station to fill the 350 coveted spots in its Music Under New York program. Musicians crowd the station for their five-minute audition in front of the judges, a panel of industry experts and MTA employees. MUNY has reserved places in 30 of the busiest stations in New York. It’s a high honor to be selected. However, you don’t have to be in MUNY if you want to play underground. Currently, there are very few restrictions put on underground performers.
These were selected to assure a cross-industry and sufficiently diverse market implementation. Additionally, the partners’ brands already integrate the value of community engagement and to varying extents have a philanthropic and volunteer infrastructure in place that will bring value to Brooklyn Beats. At the same time, they are corporations dedicated to grass-roots support, and their corporate growth depends upon penetrating new markets. They are not the names seen at every city festival; thus the value to their shareholders of the partnership with Subway Beats will be demonstrable.
Corporate Partners
Adidas: Adidas has a rich history of collaborating with artists to promote their brand and support both established and emerging musicians. Adidas has already supplied gear for a number of subway dance groups on an informal basis. This partnership with Subway Beats would thus be
a natural fit for the brand and would provide increased exposure to Adidas, including with hard-to-reach customer segments.
Operational Strategy
Brooklyn Boulders
Acquiring artists
Brooklyn Boulders is a rock climbing facility and the brand mission is also a good fit with Subway Beats: “We are an eclectic mix of lifestyles, born and bred from the unique and multifaceted forces of NYC (brooklynboulders.com).” The company has a 501c3 public charity, the Brooklyn Boulders Foundation, which includes small donations from the local community and was formed to grow service to over 2.5 million people living in Brooklyn who cannot afford the gym, particularly local youth. The company is interested in the arts and also has a mentoring program, City Rocks, designed to “ build mentoring relationships that empower students from under-resourced communities to develop self-confidence, resiliency, and the ability to succeed.” Cross-marketing opportunities, particularly with mentorships for careers in the arts, are promising.
The festival will be organized in such a way that it is minimally disruptive to the operations that are already happening underground. The festival will be an opportunity to give a more formal and structure to what is already happening underground challenge the community (in this case the entire NYC community) to rethink public space – who does it belong to? What can it be used for? Buskers have traditionally lived on the margins of society – this festival challenges that norm. We will already have a strong existing network of performers through the app. This will allow us to easily organize the buskers, however, the festival is not exclusive to performers registers with us. Typically in any city wide music or theater festival there is an “ON” piece of the festival and an “OFF” piece, this festival will take the same form.
Tunein.com: This software platform/app has 50M users, 4M podcasts, and 100,000 live radio stations, and has engaged listeners in 230 countries. They sponsor a series of “Social Innovation Audio Lectures,” demonstrating that our value proposition is a good fit with this company. The podcast exposure will extend the stage of the Subway Beats performers throughout the world, and the lecture series will grow support for Subway Beats through engagement of like-minded social-order individuals.
Artist selection There will not be an exclusive screening process to this festival, since the festival is about preserving the spontaneity of busker tradition, however, to make this multi-day festival different than other days of the year, Subway Beats will select strong performers of different mediums and reserve specific spaces for them to perform. There will be a focus on promoting these performances for audiences to attend a more traditional style concert rather than merely a passing by commuter moment.
BUSINESS MODEL Customer Relations Engaging public to connect with buskers Providing support for buskers
Value Proposition Connecting the subway busker community with busy commuters, offering a variety of immersive experiences Celebrating the value NYC buskers bring to the city through creating a series of moments to pause and take a moment to appreciate NYC artistic talent
Revenue Stream Busker 1time subscription fee to be a part of database Busker annual festival fee Government grants Brand sponsorships (paid advertising) onations Online album (splitting profit with featured buskers) Human capital
3pillars: Interactive Storytelling, Immersive Experiences, and Celebrating Busker Traditions
Channels Mobile App Platform interactive screens in subway station Advertising Festival events
Key Resources Busker participation MTA support Public spaces Subway platforms
- Human capital
Key Partners MTA MUNY NY Tourism/NYC.gov Buskers Corporate Partners Make Music New York
Key Activities
Cost Structure
Organize annual festival Strengthen busker network developing accessible database Developing partnerships Promoting marketing/PR campaign
Mobile app Marketing Music recording crew (lite) Salaries for core team
Customer Segments Diverse Buskers Commuters Corporate Brands
REVENUE SYSTEM
Exit Strategy Our team views potentially associating with a partner who is deeply embedded in the musical and/or busker community as the most likely exit pathway for Subway Beats. Such opportunities would include being acquired by partners like MUNY or event production companies who produce music festivals and events. Subway Beats will move forward on trajectory designed to maximize the opportunity to be acquired, while focusing on increasing our community and user base.
GOVERNMENT GRANTS
WEBSITE APP
S U B W A Y B E A T S
RECORDING FEE
SPONSORS ADVERSTISERS
FESTIVAL
MUSICIANS UNIQUE ANNUAL ENROLMENT FEE
EXPENSES INCOMES
Marketing/Public Relations Strategy #PauseforaBusker was built upon the insight that in the constant movement of life, commuters tend to forget to slow down. Subway Beats helps remind people to pause for a moment. What people choose to do with that moment is up to them, but our hope is for people to reflect and enjoy the spontaneous performances or interactions they might have otherwise missed. This campaign will be mainly featured in the subway stations, connecting back to our Twitter handle. Operationally, Subway Beats will utilize the campaign to gain impressions and traction towards garnering interest in the annual festival.
Conclusion The Subway Beats organization and festival is constitutive. As demonstrated by its dynamic elements, subway beats is about reframing the way we see buskers in public space and the way we use public space. Festivals create new presents. They celebrate the past but they also create new possibilities and new realities. Subway Beats follows an open source model of crowd-sourced content creation. Open Source is an important trend today across industries and utilizes a more horizontal rather than top-down structure, as the content is deter-
mined by those who choose to contribute rather than by company leadership. While Subway Beats has the value of increasing material support to Subway performers, for creation of content the business model will rely not on payments to contributors but on the prestige and good feeling that will arise from engagement with our project. We believe this process will be one of co-creation -- the Augmented Reality app will create a greater level of interactive storytelling than can be achieved through the in-person performance alone. Finally, cooperative social order is an important component to the success of Subway Beats. The proposed experiences/organizations promote the social fabric of a city. Social Order research will be used to inform project design to ensure that all stakeholders are motivated to contribute to every aspect of the project.
REFRERENCES -Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers Alexander Osterwalder - Yves Pigneur - Tim Clark Wiley - 2010 - Talking to humans: success starts with understanding your customers, Giff Constable - Frank Rimalovski - Tom Fishburne - Giff Constable - 2014 1.Suskind, Alex. Music Mic: What New Yorkers Don’t Realize About Their Subway Musicians. May 5th, 2014 http://mic.com/articles/88761/ what-new-yorkers-don-t-realize-about-their-subway-musicians 2.http://thebuskingproject.com/donate/ Farrell, Stephen. New York Times: Geechee Dan Plays the 42nd Street Subway. Jan. 25, 2013 3.http://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/100000002024122/ geechie-dan-plays-the-42nd-street-subway.html 4.Pearson, Jake. Huffington Post. NYC Subway Buskers Eke Out A Living http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/nyc-subway-buser_ n_4176875.html
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5. http://www.buskrs.com/ 6.https://www.redbull.com/br/pt/music/events/1331652785075/ red-bull-sounderground 7. The Economist. Busking it. Oct 12th 2013 http://www.economist. com/news/united-states/21587819-do-you-have-licence-swallowsword-
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busking-it 8. Jaffe, Eric. City Lab. Getting a Handle on Transit Crime. Feb. 10, 2012. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/02/getting-handel-transitcrime/1195/ 9. Duchen, Jessica. The Independent. Mind the Bach: Classical music on the underground. March 26, 2008. http://www.independent. co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/mind-the-bach-classicalmusicon-the-underground-800483.html 10. Hirsch, Lily E. Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment. 201