Tin Pan Alley was the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States of America in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

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 finally supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued on into the 1950s when earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll.

Tin Pan Alley was originally a specific place, West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan.

The name "Tin Pan Alley" was originally derogatory, a reference to the sounds made by many pianos all playing different tunes in order to sell sheet music at the same time in this small urban area, producing a cacophony comparable to banging on tin pans. With time this nickname was popularly embraced and many years later it came to describe the USA music industry in general.

Origins of Tin Pan Alley

In the mid 19th century copyright control on melodies was poorly regulated in the United States, and many competing publishers would often print their own versions of whatever songs were popular at the time. Stephen Foster's songs probably generated millions of dollars in sheet music sales, but Foster saw little of it and died in poverty.

With better copyright protection laws late in the century, songwriters, composers, lyricists, and publishers started working together for their mutual financial benefit.

The biggest music houses established themelves in New York City. Small local publishers (often connected with commercial printers or music stores) continued to flourish throughout the country, and there were important regional music publishing centers in Chicago, Illinois, New Orleans, Louisiana, Saint Louis, Missouri, and Boston, Massachusetts. When a tune became a significant local hit, however, rights to it were usually purchased from the local publisher by one of the big New York firms.

Tin Pan Alley in its Prime

The music houses in lower Manhattan were lively places, with a steady stream of songwriters, Vaudeville and Broadway performers, musicians, and song pluggers coming and going.

Aspiring songwriters came to demonstrate tunes they hoped to sell. When tunes were purchased from unknowns with no previous hits, the name of someone with the firm was often added as co-composer (in order to keep a higher percentage of royalties within the firm), or all rights to the song were purchased outright for a flat fee (including rights to put someone else's name on the sheet music as the composer). Songwriters who became established producers of commercially successful songs were hired to be on the staff of the music houses; the most successful of them, like Harry Von Tilzer and Irving Berlin, went on to found their own music publishing firms.

Song pluggers were pianists and singers who made their living demonstrating songs in order to promote sales of sheet music. Most music stores had song pluggers on staff; other pluggers were employed by the publishers to travel around and make the public familiar with their new publications.

When Vaudeville performers played New York City, they would often visit various Tin Pan Alley firms in order to find new songs to add to their acts. Second and third rate performers often would pay for rights to use a new song, whereas famous stars would be given free copies of publisher's new numbers or even paid to publicly perform them, for the publishers knew this was valuable advertising.

Initially Tin Pan Alley specialized in melodramatic ballads and comic novelty songs, but it quickly embraced the newly popular styles of the Cakewalk and Ragtime music. Later on elements of jazz and the blues were incorporated as well, although less completely, as Tin Pan Alley was oriented towards producing songs that any amateur singer or small town band could perform from printed music. Since improvisation, blue notes, and other characteristics of jazz and blues could not be captured in conventional printed notation, Tin Pan Alley manufactured jazzy and bluesy pop-songs and dance numbers. Much of the general public in the late 1910s and the 1920s did not know the difference between these contrived commercial products and authentic jazz and blues.

Tin Pan Alley's Influence on Law and Business

A group of Tin Pan Alley music houses formed the Music Publishers Association of the United States on June 11, 1895, and successfully lobbied the United States Federal Government to extend the term of copyright for published music to 40 years, renewable for an additional 20.

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) was founded in 1914 as an organization to mutually aid and protect the interests of established publishers and composers. New members were only admitted with sponsorship of existing members. By the end of the 1910s, it was estimated that over 90% of the sheet music and phonograph records sold in the USA paid royalties to ASCAP.

Tin Pan Alley composers

Leading Tin Pan Alley composers include:

• Irving Berlin
• Shelton Brooks
• George M. Cohan
• Paul Dresser
• Buddy DeSylva
• Walter Donaldson
• George Gershwin
• Albert Von Tilzer
• Harry Von Tilzer

Tin Pan Alley publishing houses

Leading Tin Pan Alley publishing houses included:

• Ager, Yellen, & Bornstein Inc.
• Irving Berlin, Inc
• Broadway Music Corporation
• Walter Donaldson Music
• Leo Feist (advertising "You Can't Go Wrong With A Feist Song")
• Harms Inc.
• Charles K. Harris
• Remick Music Corp.
• Shapiro, Bernstein, & Co.
• Joseph Stern & Co.
• Harry Von Tilzer Music Publishing Co.
• M. Witmark & Sons

Tin Pan Alley's biggest hits

Tin Pan Alley's biggest hits included:

• "After The Ball is Over" (Charles K. Harris, 1892)
• "The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo" (Charles Coborn, 1892)
• "The Sidewalks of New York" (Lawlor & Blake, 1894)
• "The Band Played On" (Charles B. Ward & John F. Palmer, 1895)
• "Mister Johnson, Turn Me Loose" (Ben Harney, 1896)
• "A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight" (Joe Hayden & Theodore Mertz, 1896)
• "Warmest Baby in the Bunch" (George M. Cohan, 1896)
• "At a Georgia Campmeeting" (Kerry Mills, 1897)
• "Hearts & Flowers" (Theodore Moses Tobani, 1899)
• "Hello My Baby (Hello Ma Ragtime Gal)" (Emerson, Howard, & Sterling, 1899)
• "Only A Bird in a Gilded Cage" (Harry Von Tilzer, 1900)
• ""Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home" (Huey Cannon, 1902)
• "In the Good Old Summertime" (Ren Shields & George Evans, 1902)
• "Give My Regards To Broadway" (George M. Cohan, 1904)
• "Shine Little Glow Worm" (Paul Lincke & Lilla Cayley Robinson, 1907)
• "Shine on Harvest Moon" (Nora Bayes, 1908)
• "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" (Albert Von Tilzer, 1908)
• ""By The Light of the Silvery Moon" (Gus Edwards & Edward Madden, 1909)
• "Down by the Old Mill Stream" (Tell Taylor, 1910)
• "Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine" (Fred Fisher & Alfred Bryan, 1910)
• "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Beth Slater Whitson & Leo Friedman, 1910)
• "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (Irving Berlin, 1911)
• "Some of These Days" (Shelton Brooks, 1911)
• "Peg o' My Heart" (Fred Fisher & Alfred Bryan, 1913)
• "At the Darktown Strutters Ball" (Shelton Brooks, 1917)
• "K-K-K-Katy" (Geoffrey O'Hara, 1918)
• "Oh By Jingo!" (Albert Von Tilzer, 1919)
• "Swanee" (George Gershwin, 1919)
• "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans" (Creamer & Turner Layton, 1922)
• "Yes, We Have No Bananas" (Frank Silver & Irving Cohn, 1923)
• "Everybody Loves My Baby" (Spencer Williams, 1924)
• "All Alone" (Irving Berlin, 1924)
• "Sweet Georgia Brown" (Maceo Pinkard, 1925)
• "Baby Face" (Bennie Davis & Harry Akst, 1926)
• "I Got Rhythm" (George & Ira Gershwin, 1930)