Asleep at the switch during the dawn of Napster and viciously retaliatory in the years that followed, the music industry hasn't done itself any favours over the last decade. In an effort to maintain a business model that is no longer relevant, the "Big Four" music behemoths have attempted a slew of marketing tactics, from added-value multimedia discs, to movie tie-ins, to bundling and boxing product into "premium" offerings. This week, Toronto-based Sony BMG......

Apple advertises its 8 GB MP3 player––some device called the "I Pod Mini"––as having enough capacity for 2,000 songs. Rogers, on the other hand, is marketing its 8 GB Sony Ericsson W580i MP3-playing phone as having the capacity for 10,000 songs! 10,000! That's no problem if you like all your music under a minute and a half, in mono, and encoded at an AM radio–quality bitrate. Otherwise, you might be a little disappointed––you know, more......

The good folks at TiVo have decided that now would be the optimum time to unleash their initially-much-talked-about-but-not-so-much-talked-about-anymore product on Canadians, a mere eight years after its release to the U.S. and U.K. markets. (Way to capitalize on a phenomenon, fellas!) TiVo can be credited––at least according to Canada.com––with "making TV watching less of a laborious task," which is a relative understatement considering how exhausting sitting through commercials can be to the average viewer. Don't......

There are more ways to walk and discover this city than just following the city’s Discovery Walk maps. There are an increasing number of guided audio tours that you can download from the Internet and pack into your digital music player before heading out on your expedition. One audio tour company, City Surf, has several neighbourhood tours available for about $10 each. Recently, City Surf teamed up with Waterfront Toronto to offer a free......

To some people, Groundhog Day is a silly little day where some rodent-like critter gets 15 seconds in the news cycle to flip a coin and tell us if there's going to be a short summer or not. Or for some, it could be all about the 1993 classic starring Bill Murray about a crazy day that repeats itself over and over and over again. But to Fort York, Groundhog Day is going to......

Everyone likes free swag, and we happen to have quite a bit of it lately. Our latest offering is for tickets to see Chicago buzz band The Changes, along with +/- and The Sharp Tongues this Wednesday at Sneaky Dee's. Yes, we know that the show is technically free, but hey, this guarantees you'll get in, should it happen to sell out. Perhaps more importantly, you'll also take home a signed copy of their......

Friday, we caught the 9:15 pm show of Mutual Appreciation at the Bloor Cinema. Shot in grainy black and white, we follow the story of Alan, a musician who's just relocated to New York from Boston. He's finding his way in a new city with the help of his old friend Lawrence and Lawrence's girlfriend Ellie. Alan's band has broken up, he's got a gig to play, and he needs to find a drummer.......

In response to the collapse of an overpass in Quebec, the provincial and municipal government will look at overpasses in this province. They reassure us that none of this province's overpasses have the same design as the one in Quebec and are regularly checked. Just hours after thousands of people stumbled home after looking at hours of art, 30,000 people take part in the CIBC Run For the Cure on Sunday. The annual event raised......

An officer was shot at earlier today which prompted a manhunt in Etobicoke. Police kept a nearby school and community centre closed for safety reasons. A retired gang cop points out that Toronto had a number of great anti-gang units which were dismantled a decade ago. He argues this is one of the reasons the city has seen more gang-related violence in recent years. The CAA is calling for a ban on cellphones and MP3......

DCist is screwed in the event of an oil crisis. Not that we're not all screwed in the event of an oil crisis, just D.C. is more screwed. Don't sell your car yet, District resident, a cabbie can kick you to the curb if he doesn't like your address. Not even Metro can save you now. Londonist experiences the London of the future through the wonders of 3D modeling, but while the 3D guys are......

In the year that the popularity of the ringtone might have outweighed the popularity of the single, Toronto-I-S-T comes up with the top ten songs that mattered in 2005. 1. Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley - "Welcome to Jamrock" Called "the reggae song of the decade" by the New York Times, "Welcome to Jamrock" is the cross-over hit that shouldn't be: Unlike his contemporaries, Marley the youngest didn't have to employ an RnB hook from Beyonce......

Ah the holidays! A time when we can be together and share links. Here it's not so much sharing as providing. So: - Pork Busters is an attempt answer to Siri Agrell's aching question: "Are Canadian Bloggers Pussies?" Here, there is a blog-wide attempt to uncover useless programs within our government. - Said the Grammophone has a best songs of the year list and MP3 offerings. How about that Herman Dune! - The newest Chapelle......

With SH, it's one present after another. Here's what the big guy has passed down over the past two weeks: - Minimum sentences for drug offenders. (Obviously targeting Andre Boisclair here.) - Eliminating conditional sentences, or house arrest, for all indictable drug offences. - A promise NOT to decriminalize marijuana. - Shut down safe-injection sites in Vancouver. - Reduce wait lists for cancer treatment, diagnostic testing and other health care treatment, with or without......

We didn't actually spend the weekend with Crispin Glover (we didn't buy him breakfast or anything), but it got pretty close. On Saturday, Torontoist was creeping around Rue-Morgue’s Festival of Fear in hopes of catching CG for a one-on-one. Instead, we got a front row seat at his ‘Intimate and Interactive.’ Our hopes of questioning Glover regarding hate-on for Jaws director Steven Speilberg was dashed by a combination of fawning questions ("You’ve played some......

It's easy to avoid The Game and Fifty Cents. Likewise for Nickelback. It's even pretty easy to stay away from Thornley and the Barenaked Ladies. They don't bother us, and we don't bother them. But there are some bands, SOME bands, that bring us to the brink of violent disgust; it's almost beyond hatred. One example that is often played out here on Mercredi Mixtape is our distaste for Las Vegas corporate rockers The Killers.......

Given the relatively short existence of rap music, tracing its lineage appears fairly simple. The advances in the genre are well-documented: Kool Herc started turntablism, Kurtis Blow first brought rap to the mainstream, Prince Paul popularized skits, Afrika Bambaataa rocked the sample, and so forth and so on. Then there is Dr Dre's classic 1992 album The Chronic, which represents perhaps the most perplexing turn in hip hop history. The album essentially brought West Coast......

Last week, Torontoist was criticized for the inclusion of an Ol' Dirty Bastard song for the second time in the short run of our mixtape series. If this were a few years ago, Torontoist would have probably responded to the fairly legitimate beef by posting only ODB Mp3's today. But that was us then. Now, we take a cue from the populist French leader Jacques Chirac and take a more diplomatic approach to the problem.......