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Tin Pan Alley

American  

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 British  

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 Cultural  

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

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.