Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Publishers on West 28th Street hired pluggers to push tunes into vaudeville. The figure is taken from Library of Congress, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a music fact?

Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Tin Pan Alley sold songs as sheet music

Publishers on West 28th Street hired pluggers to push tunes into vaudeville From the 1890s, New York's music publishers clustered on a block of West 28th Street, where a din of pianos gave the district its nickname. Their business was printed sheet music, not recordings, and song pluggers performed new numbers for performers and radio bands. The piano in the parlour made the song, not the singer, the product. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Library of Congress

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: publishing, sheet-music, new-york

Tin Pan Alley sold songs as sheet music: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Publishers on West 28th Street hired pluggers to push tunes into vaudeville. The figure is taken from Library of Congress, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?: Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.