Can This Metal Musician Make Money Performing on the Street? (VIDEO)

Think about any street musician you've seen recently: what genre of music were they performing?

It was probably some variation of rock, pop, jazz or funk. What it most definitely was not, was heavy metal.

Why don't more metal musicians perform on the street? Is it because they're mostly anti-social weirdos? Are they too busy practicing their techniques? Will they get arrested for being too noisy? 

Perhaps a more likely reason is that almost no one has ever tried it.

Guitarist David Wu of the metal band Cyborg Octopus set out to find out how people might respond to something completely different from a street performer.

Wu said in a piece for Metalsucks.net that he considers his experiment a huge success. 

"How many douchebags with an acoustic guitar do you see playing Top 40 hits on crowded streets? A LOT. 

But how many constipated-looking Asian dudes do you see playing metal while actively trying to headbang his skull out of his skin? Probably under three. As a result, multiple people tipped within a short period of time."

Wu says he played metal on the streets of San Francisco for about 30 minutes and made $17. As a control, he played "normal" music ("Wonderwall" by Oasis) and only "captured the attention of a cute girl who sang along for a couple of minutes, we yielded a whopping zero dollars."

His conclusion?

"People will pay for good entertainment...I made sure to give lots of eye contact, smile, and even interact with the passersby."

Furthermore, Wu thinks that if he performed more often and found a better location, he could make some decent money.

He writes that it's a good lesson to musicians of all styles that they should think outside the box about how they can use what's unique about them to make their music more profitable.

You can see more from Wu on his YouTube channel, Riff Shop.

Photo: YouTube / Riff Shop