Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley as a genre made me think about how the music bussiness worked a long time ago, and how it is quite similar to today. I actually was thinking about another post which described Tin Pan Alley and the lack of variation compared to today and how noone could really be original. I do agree to this to an extent. Sure, there cannot be that much variation when multiple composers are working next to each other and listening to each other's creations all day, but what is the different between that and what is played on the radio every single day now. Whenever I decide to listen to the local radio stations there are only a few different variations of song. There is the clubbing dance kind of song, the rap song about drinking and partying, and then there are the songs that relate to all teenage little girls. Every song falls in those three categories. Rihanna, T pain, Taylor Swift. It is all the same. We are definitely lucky that we do not have to settle for that, but then again I'm sure people didn't have to back in the early 20th century either. Music wasn't played everywhere like it was today, so I'm sure people heard tons of music that was unique. Maybe there may not be tons of evidence of those cool rare finds because they did not have recordings available to leave behind.