How Much an NYC Subway Busker Makes

“Mayers, now twenty-seven, performs three days a week, for three to six hours at a time. His typical hourly take ranges from thirty dollars to fifty dollars; while his monthly income is generally around twelve hundred dollars — enough to cover his living costs — he has brought in as much as five thousand dollars in a month. Mayers’s business expenses are few: MetroCards and strings for his ‘guitalele’ (a hybrid of a guitar and a ukulele), which cost about five dollars and are replaced every month or so.”

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