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

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.

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.

Example Sentences

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

From The Daily Beast

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

From The Daily Beast

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

From Project Gutenberg