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Tin Pan Alley

noun

  1. the district of a city, especially New York City, where most of the popular music is published.
  2. the composers or publishers of popular music as a group.


Tin Pan Alley

noun

  1. a district in a city concerned with the production of popular music, originally a small district in New York
  2. derogatory.
    the strictly commercial side of show business and pop music
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


Tin Pan Alley

  1. A reference to the popular music industry in the United States; the term is not used as much today as it was a generation or two ago.


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Notes

Tin Pan Alley is often associated with songwriters who are more interested in making money off their songs than in producing high-quality music.
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Example Sentences

Tin Pan Alley composers plugged their songs there, most famously “Daisy Bell,” with its lyric about “a bicycle built for two.”

That was how Tin Pan Alley worked: Songwriters recorded demos for their publishers, who fed them to specific performers.

Lay Down Your Arms, the loudspeaker blared in another tune from tin-pan alley.

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