tin pan alley

1. 1.

   a city district (originally in New York) where composers and publishers of popular music do business

   Broaderbusiness district

Questions about tin pan alley

What does tin pan alley mean?

tin pan alley means "a city district (originally in New York) where composers and publishers of popular music do business".

Is tin pan alley a common word?

tin pan alley is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.