Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and a plaque (see below) on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it. This block is now considered to be part of Manhattan's NoMad neighborhood and the Flower District.

The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph and radio supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll.

The origins of the name "Tin Pan Alley" are unclear. The most popular account holds that it was originally a derogatory reference in the New York Herald referring to the sound made by many pianos all playing different tunes being exactly like the banging of many tin pans in an alleyway. With time, this nickname was popularly embraced and many years later it came to describe the U.S. music industry in general. According to Katherine Charlton, the "term Tin Pan Alley referred to the thin, tinny tone quality of cheap upright pianos used in music publisher's offices."

By extension, the term "Tin Pan Alley" is also used to describe any area within a major city with a high concentration of music publishers or musical instrument stores – an example being Denmark Street in London's West End. In the 1920s the street became known as "Britain's Tin Pan Alley" because of the large number of music shops, a title it still holds.