You will need at least level 40 music.
At level 40 it causes every NPC in the audience to not dislike your performance, removing the risk of having a stone thrown at you.

Leveling music is quite straightforward
1. Play music for an audience. Without audience you will never gain any experience
2. either get money thrown at you or stones thrown at you, or even simply someone commenting about your performance will yield exp
the green note icon indicates someone likes your performance

a >< icon indicates someone dislikes your performance

an angry vein icon indicates they are no longer interested or listening


once the audience is bored, move onto another audience or another town and do it again.
Any instrument works even the basic lute.

You want to do performance requests from the quest board.
You can find those in the towns of Palmia or Lumiest

Palmia is located Northeast from Meadow (your starting map) right before the snowy area
Lumiest is located inside a volcano Southeast of Palmia

You want to start with the easy quests that require you to hit 150-200 points and slowly work towards higher level quest.

Score is determined by how many people there are in the audience, and how well you performed
First things first you need to quickly find a spot with a large audience. The quest sends you into an area and you have roughly 10 "turns" worth of performance before time is over and it kicks you out


Once you find a large crowd, play the instrument in the middle (usually a harp or a harpsichord)
You will get a series of different reactions
1. No reaction: gain less than 50 points
2. Sparse applause: gain between 50 and 100 points
3. Applause: 100-150 points
4. Applause and cheer: 150+ points



Performance requests by default give much more money than random street performances
The type of NPC present seems to also affect how much money they give



Shopkeepers and Vendor NPCs seem to give a moderate amount of money




NPCs that outlevel you or unique named NPCs seem to give more

Failing the quest is mostly irrelevant, you get a hit on fame and maybe some karma lost, but you keep all the money you earn

Be sure to spend some time learning the melodies of each instrument, especially the harp and harpsichord since failing to fully play a verse will only net partial points while spending a whole turn

be sure to bring your own instrument as a backup if you cannot find a large crowd fast enough