LONDON — For generations, street musicians have provided the soundtrack for Leicester Square, a tourist hub in London’s West End, where the likes of Rod Stewart and George Michael busked before becoming superstars.

Now the city is changing its tune.

Last week, the Westminster City Council, the local borough authority, banned street performances in Leicester Square after a judge described them as a “nuisance,” noting that repetitive sounds (including famous pop songs) were a well-known feature of “psychological torture.”

The ban was announced Thursday after Global, a media company with an office building on the square, took the council to court, arguing that the noise from the performances was “overwhelming.” The company said its office workers were forced to take phone calls in closets to escape the sounds from the street below.

Buskers have long been polarizing in big cities. Some see whimsy in a cover band in subways; others would rather keep it out of public spaces. In one London square, at least, the critics seem to have won out.

The yellow circles where buskers had performed in Leicester Square were empty Thursday morning. News of the ban provoked joy, indignation and relief.

“Oh, thank God,” Abu Khan, 28, said after a reporter told him about the ban.

Khan, who works 12 hours a day at a convenience store in Leicester Square, said the music was sometimes so loud he couldn’t hear customers.

“I have to scream loud, and my customer thinks I’m fighting with him,” he said. “I’m losing my customers because of my voice.”

The shows also drew crowds of tourists who blocked the shop’s entrance, he said. The blaring tunes also stressed him out.

“I have family problems, doctor problems, job problems, girlfriend problems,” he said. “They give me more headaches.”

For others, the music has been part of the square’s charm.

Dorian Ronne, a pub manager, noted that people had been performing in the square longer than some of the nearby businesses have existed.

“It’s like people going to the countryside and complaining about the hogs and cows,” Ronne, 27, said.

Sandy Malai, a 22-year-old deputy manager at a fast-food restaurant, said the buskers’ soundtrack lightened her workdays and delighted her customers.

“It’s the culture of Leicester Square,” she said. “They’ve been here for years and years.”

Chris Jones, 35, a bartender at a nearby pub, was of two minds. Great performances felt like “fresh air,” he said. But “there’s a proportion of them that ruin it for everybody else.”

He said he’d seen performers harass tourists for donations, and beatboxers “slander” people and the government. “From a business point of view, sometimes it’s bloody annoying.”

On his lunch break in the square, construction worker Edward Lewis, 43, said the ban is an affront to liberty.

“It’s an overreach from the government,” he said. “How do you take away someone’s right to perform on the street?”

The ban applies only to Leicester Square and not to the other 24 locations across the city where buskers can still perform, the council said.