A nicer story
Rob pointed me towards an interesting experiment that the Washington Post did: they got a world-class violinist to pose as a busker outside a D.C. subway. It turns out that almost no one stopped to listen or give him money, although several people realized that he was better than a typical street performer. You can listen to the whole 45 minutes of music, and it’s pretty nice stuff.
There is a great response to the Joshua Bell article by a NYC subway musician in her blog: http://www.SawLady.com/blog
She interprets the situation differently from the Washington Post reporters… I thought you might find it interesting.