Detecting quality

I thought this story was ridiculous, and I am a musician myself (though not nearly the same caliber as Joshua Bell).

I commute through Le'Enfant Plaza every morning and a third of the commuters are wearing earplugs or earphones. I wear earphones so I don't have to listen to other people's ill-behaved and ill-supervised children.

Even if this weren't the case, you don't order caviar at a baseball game, you don't hang a Picasso in a grocery store, and you don't have Joshua Bell playing in the subway.

That being said, he should have tried Union Station. I think they actually allow musicians there . . .

Interesting stunt. Stupid experiment.

An interesting aspect for an economist is how high the Gini coefficient is for classical musical performers, not unlike other artists. A handful great performers like Bell can earn upwards of a million dollars per year (and much more in popular genres). A few almost great can maybe get by with a job in an orchestra. Those that don't get a seat in the pit might hope for $40 an hour busking at a metro station. The other 99 percent become Post Office supervisors and such. Is this fair? WaPo doesn't seem to care, for a change.

More interesting is that they were denied permission to play at the Metro, and it took over 3 days to get that permission denial to wind its way through the bureaucracy, but the private Mall operator gave an okay in 6 seconds. this is why he palyed where he did, on private property outside the metro boundary.

Does it make anyone feel better that my 5 year old likes Brahms? Well, the dances anyway, they're fast enough for his frenetic little brain to enjoy.

I don't know that a classical musician would have ever been a show stopper, in any era. The "average Joe" is who he is by definition, and regardless of college education, professional status, or whatever, most people are just average stiffs with average tastes.

But for those who believe that the venue was at fault, placing a well known, easily recognized pop-artist in a similar situation would have drawn much more of a crowd. That wouldn't be exactly the same thing; pitting pure celebrity against the artistic allure of music itself, but the point is that people would find time to stop if they really wanted to.

Happy Juggler: I think the point is that you want to have the experiment when people are under time constraints. Otherwise you get a pooling equilibrium where everyone will stop and listen regardless of quality because they have nothing better to do. At high time cost, people will only stop if perceived quality is high. That people didn't stop suggests either that they cannot discern quality, or that their funtion mapping time costs to propensity to stop and listen asymptotes too quickly.

I really think it hurt the experiment to conduct it at a location where people would be on their way to work. No matter how good the music, they all had previous commitments. Thus we're not seeing how many people value quality music; we're seeing how many people value it enough to compromise their plans.

In a leisure setting, like a shopping mall on the weekend, interest would probably be more reflective of the quality of the music. I've been at malls where piano salesmen can draw a crowd at a keyboard — I'm sure Joshua Bell would do much better in such a setting.

Python, Hodak, HappyJuggler: You guys are hard! The Post people did something interesting and tried to make the best of it. I was surprised and intrigued that they even went so far as to track down people that were there to interview them.

It is noteworthy that almost all the interviewees were government employees. From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, my impression is that private employees are much more flexible with their schedule.

One time, on vacation, I was in Beijing in the underground tunnel that leads to the subway. Strangely, for a few moments, there was no one in the long corridor except my wife, me, and a handicapped old-timer playing a stringed Chinese instrument. It was beautiful. The acoustics, the scene – to me was breathtaking. I stopped walking and looked at the guy, trying to understand the senses that were rushing to my head. My wife, who had grown up amongst such things, basically pushed me onto the escalator. During that trip, I saw many more like him but in busier settings; and the Chinese basically pushed right past them, very few dropping coins.

I want to clarify that I think it was a cool "experiment" for the Post to do, but I don't think their conclusions or moralizing was accurate.

Fine music, played in a busy subway station while you are in a hurry is no longer fine music. I can hear better music at home from my MP3s without the bureaucrat bumping my elbow. If I am running a marathon and you offer me Dom Perignon out of a paper cup, I'm not going to appreciate it as much.

Put another way, I can view "copies" of Van Gogh's work at a good art store that are nearly the same quality as Van Gogh's actual work. When I go to the museum I pause, reflect, and admire his work. At the art store, I walk right past the copies and head to the dogs playing poker . It's not that I've dismissed his quality or was ignorant to it, it's just that I want to admire it in the context that fits the occasion.

True, if Bono was singing down in the the subway, I'd stop to listen. But the world's best drummer, violinist, cellist, whistler, chicken plucker, probably not.