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......

It used to be that as sure as you could count on awkward conversations at the office Christmas party and a stocking full of clementines on Christmas morning, you could count on being able to turn your TV to channel 11 on Christmas Eve to see a certain Bing Crosby vehicle featuring the best-selling single of all time: White Christmas. While channel 11 (it's certainly not CHCH anymore...what is it?) has given up its......

Fresh from this year's successful stab at World's Largest Thriller Dance, Toronto is looking to weasel its way into the Guinness Book yet again. This time, with a big-ass Christmas stocking. To coincide with the third annual Guinness World Records Day, the sock of honour will be stationed in the main lobby of the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts this Thursday afternoon. While it isn't technically part of the record attempt, folks are encouraged......

Canadians can no longer access Demonoid.com, the world's second-most popular BitTorrent tracker. According to a statement on Demonoid's website, legal action treatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has forced them to block connections from Canada. This can only be seen as a major victory for the CRIA. Thanks to them, it is no longer possible to download pirated music off the internet...unless, of course, you happen to live outside of Canada, or you......

As Torontoist reported yesterday, the Hummingbird Centre is changing its name to the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, marking the second change in corporate naming rights during the venue's half-century existence. Support of the site has ranged from a philanthropic brewer (O'Keefe Brewing head E.P. Taylor) to a multinational media company. As today's ad promised, Yonge and Front has seen a wide range of performances since the O'Keefe Centre officially rolled out the......

As of Friday, it's no longer the Hummingbird Centre, but instead the Sony Centre. You know what? All performing arts venues should be renamed so that they sound like something you would find at your local mall. It gives the whole experience more delicious corporate flavour. Stephen Harper says there will be no vote on the mission in Afghanistan anytime soon unless it is to "finish the job." And if that sounded like, "Hey, I......

Haydain Neale, 36-year-old singer of Toronto-based band jacksoul, is in hospital in critical condition following a vehicle accident on Friday evening at the intersection of Eglinton Avenue and Kennedy Road [map]. The performer's injuries are serious, but he remains stable. His family has requested that details of his injuries and the hospital he has been admitted to remain private. Hamilton-born Neale currently lives in The Beaches with his wife and daughter, and won a......

"Honest Ed" Mirvish dies at 92. As the man himself would say: He may be gone, but his bargains sure aren't. Torontoist's obituary for him can be found here. Details on the funeral are here. Toronto police board still making up its mind about whether or not to approve Tasers. Insert bad joke about "shocking" here if you want to pretend that you are actually listening to Humble and Fred rather than reading Torontoist. New......

The Toronto Star revealed Tuesday that the Hummingbird Centre has sold its naming rights to Sony for $3 million for a term of ten years. Sony has the option of buying themselves ten more years for an additional $2 million. Even though the Hummingbird Centre is a public institution, the public had no say in this matter, as the identity of the high bidder was kept secret until City Council's Executive Committee had already......

In a recent argument in favour of the heritage value of the Sam's sign, the billboards in Yonge-Dundas Square were compared to "banner ad slots on a Web page" due to their ephemeral nature. Well, the same could be said of our cultural institutions. The agenda of the June 25th meeting of City Council's Executive Committee [PDF] contains a report recommending that the naming rights of the Hummingbird Centre be resold [PDF]: The financial......

If Torontoist wasn’t looking after the kids tonight, we’d be checking out The End of the Internet. The End is scheduled tonight at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West) for precisely 9 p.m. The upstart, performance-based reading series, which has been ending the Internet for almost a year now, is hosted by man-about-town Louis Calabro. Tonight, Brian Joseph Davis performs his “first ever laptop gig” with dulcet sounds he has produced over the last......

From the million-record-selling stadium band to that guy who used to sell cassettes on Queen Street, Torontoist readers share their stories of the city's lost-but-not-forgotten musical acts. Today's Revisited review comes from Cameron Gordon. Superior Cackling Hen Bourbon Tabernacle Choir Yonder Records/Sony No band epitomized the communal spirit of early 1990’s Toronto more so than the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir. Their seasonal blend of soul, rock and funk made them a top live draw during that......

This Torontoist was at a very busy house party last weekend and discovered that there were roughly only four topics of conversation anyone would discuss: God of War II, Facebook, 300, and the Nintendo Wii. Particularly the Nintendo Wii. Does this mean Torontoist only goes to dorky parties? Not really; it was a fairly even cross section of Torontonians (we promise!). So, with the Wii on everyone’s lips but in almost noone’s shopping carts......

Former Alliance president Robert Lantos and former president of CBS/Tri-Star Pictures/Sony Pictures Jeff Sagansky have invested millions in TV production company Blueprint Entertainment in order to create better Canadian television. Lantos explains, "The strategy is simple: to design TV shows that from the ground floor are genuinely Canadian...[and] whose first sale is to a network in the U.S. In the States, they perceive these shows as being domestic, so they are able to be......

It's tough to get excited about Kikkoman soy sauce bottles. They've been around since 1961, and you find them at every sushi dive in the city. But, at one time, they were the height of tableware innovation, and for that reason, they're included in a new show at the Design Exchange: Japanese Design Today 100. This exhibition, co-presented by the Japan Foundation, celebrates 100 everyday objects that each, in their own way, broke design......

Some game system made by some game company named Sony launched today. And sold out in about five minutes. The jury is still out on whether this will be a bigger letdown than The Phantom Menace was. Famous conservative economist Milton Friedman died yesterday at 94. Since John Kenneth Galbraith died six months ago and these things traditionally happen in threes, you'd better be careful if you're a world-famous economist! Re: Toronto traffic: we're......

Today, mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson launched M-Buzz, a music content service that focuses on new, up-and-coming artists. Out of the ten hand-picked artists featured in this major international promotion, two are unsigned acts from Toronto.......

Does this city ever get enough of Frank Gehry? After all, there is such thing as too much Gehry (Re: the future of the AGO...) The question becomes, when will the Gehry love bucket overflow and flood Toronto, killing everything in its path? The AGO's expected opening is in 2008. But alas, just as the Gehry Exhibit at U of T comes to a close, the film Sketches of Frank Ghery opens. (I should......

Yeah, OK, so the sponsor’s name precedes the name of the event, the website is klunky, there’s a disheartening absence of b-girls in the lineup of dancers, and the strict no-photos rule screams cheesy-DVD-release-TBA, but where else in Toronto, besides the (Red Bull) King Of The Ring, are you going to see this much b-boying this Sunday? It’s a one-on-one battle-- 20 pan-Canadian b-boys and 20 American b-boys compete for a dorky WWE-style championship belt......

Torontoist likes being socially aware and with that, we bring you Inner City Visions. IC Visions is North America's first governmentally funded hip-hop & urban music centre. They have a full in-house studio where they invite young people with an interest in music to come in and record their songs and compositions totally free of charge. As studio equipment and recording times are hard to come by, IC Visions is providing a most fabulous......

By reading just about any business or tech writing (Wired comes to mind), you'd know that Sony-BMG is in some HEAT. But we don't hear much about the who's and the what for's, do we? Well, here's some answers: The affected CD's include the latest Bad Plus and Neil Diamond, as well as some horrible albums that no Torontoist readers would consider buying (hopes-fully). As of last Friday, all 52 titles are now listed on......

To many, blogging is the epitome of nerd-like behaviour. A person willfully sits in front of a computer screen for hours, playing around with RSS feeds, HTML formatting, linking and Halo scan commenting. Did we mention blog-rolling? Nerdish to the max. However there does exists a more extreme case of nerdocious behaviour, and it was on full display this morning/last night around the Blockbuster/Future Shop/tech stores of the city. Sony PSP's hit retail stores today......