In the music industry's latest attempt to lazily claw itself out of the grave, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) is proposing a $5.00 per month licence fee on Canadian Internet accounts that would legalize music downloads. They're calling it the Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing, a "reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation" that will allow consumers to fill their bellies full of all the music they can handle from any......

Have you ever wondered what you could learn from a computer pioneer? You'll have your chance to find out when Michael Dell rolls into town for a free speaking engagement at Convocation Hall later this month. Okay, so Dell isn't exactly a pioneer: he's famous not for inventing anything, but merely for improving the process of assembling a bunch of parts into a serviceable computer, shipping it somewhere, and making a boatload of money while......

Few companies inspire the kind of product lust that Apple does, and it's no secret that Mac users can be somewhat evangelical about the company from Cupertino. To many Apple fans in Canada, it's sheer torture that TV shows and movies aren't yet available in the Canadian iTunes Music Store, or that the iPhone is taking so damn long to cross the border. In the United States, the iPhone has been the must-have tech......

So, last season—sorry, cycle—of Canada's Next Top Model was kinda "meh" compared to the Tyra-shoutin', model-faintin', drag-walkin' original. Host Tricia Helfer seemed to be reprising her other role as a robot Cylon, but one with consistently dwindling batteries, and the season one production values were also a bit low-wattage. The new host CHUM has whisked-in to save the day is ANTM fan favourite and Toronto-bred Jay Manuel, who dashingly wears shirts for promo shots......

The image everyone has of the quintessential comic book expert is a guy sitting around in his basement with 50-year-old copies of Superman, ranting wildly about the Golden Age. Leading comics theorist Scott McCloud defies that stereotype entirely. He is best known for writing comic books about comic books: epic treatises which are remarkably optimistic about the future of the industry. This evening he will be in Toronto giving a lecture, Understanding, Reinventing, and......

There is some lively behind-the-scenes discussions happening at this year's Hot Docs festival. Yesterday, the industry got together to talking about the environmental impact of cinema. According to the Greencode Project, "A recent UCLA study of the environmental footprint left by Hollywood finds that California's media industry creates more greenhouse gases than the apparel, hotel, or aerospace industries in the region." Yesterday, Greencode Project organizers met with filmmakers to unveil their proposal to draft......

Tokyo's Zoobombs played their final show last night at the Silver Dollar after playing five shows in Toronto in the last week. Organized by the infamous Dan Burke, the shows were an effort to attract industry interest in the Japanese band without any help from the industry at all. In a direct offensive against last week's CMW festival, Burke's aim seemed to be to have a successful slew of shows with the same band "without......

Admirers and connoisseurs of adult films mark this down on your calendar: Ron Jeremy, the “hardest working man in showbiz” brings his, er, talents, to Toronto tomorrow evening. This Is Not A Reading Series presents the Canadian launch party for Ron Jeremy’s memoir, The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz, published by HarperCollins. Over the past two decades, Jeremy, known as The Hedgehog, has appeared in more than 1700 porn films and directed 250 of them.......

Torstar Corporation officially announced yesterday that "voluntary and involuntary restructurings" would result in the loss of 85 jobs in its newspaper division, which is mostly the Toronto Star. This is in contrast to changes earlier in 2006 that focused on lacklustre sales of the corporation's Harlequin romance novels. This news comes two months after the October resignation of the Toronto Star's publisher, Michael Goldbloom, and the editor-in-chief, Giles Gherson in the wake of declining advertising......

CopyCamp is an "unconference" (hateful term) coming to Toronto September 28, 29, 30, at Ryerson Student Campus Centre. It's very much a planned do-it-yourself-you-participants affair, so there's no agenda (yet) and the wiki doesn't go up until a couple of weeks prior. From their site:CopyCamp is a place to meet people making art and making waves, an opportunity to discover how the Internet can work for artists and fans, and a chance to debate......

To some concern and resistance, the City of Toronto implemented a significant taxi reform program in 1998, imposing a more consistent set of regulations and rearranging how the industry was run. From the public's perspective, cabs seemed to become newer and cleaner almost immediately, and drivers were (hopefully) to become less-intimidating. One of the most interesting programs resulting from the 1998 reform is still mysterious to most riders: the Ambassador Taxicab program. Driven only......

The worst thing about having a pass for NXNE is using it. I got my perspective of the festival working the door at The Boat for the Maple Music showcase. The job was to bow for the “delegates” or “pass-holes” as they walked passed a growing line of wristband holders, or “audience.” It’s crystal clear to me that NXNE is set up by the industry, for the industry; audience and musicians are afterthoughts. On......

Torontoist contributor Shari K. pointed us to Kijiji, a bulletin board service launched earlier this year that lets you post messages, jobs, for sale ads, apartment listings and more. This piqued our curiousity. Kijiji (whose name is a typographic nightmare!) seems like a Craigslist clone albeit with a touch of cuteness. The name means village in Swahili, they post photos of the site moderators (like this one) and it seems like a fun, little non-profit......

Either the Tangiers all own a copy of Flowers of Evil, or they're fans of And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead...or they like the idea of a new Toronto label. Whatever was behind the decision, they've announced their new album, The Family Myth, will be release on Baudelaire, soon-to-be Toronto's newest record label. Distributed by Outside Music, the Tangiers will be releasing their third record, and first for the Baudelaire label,......

Japan will get a dose of Cancontent this weekend, when Broken Social Scene, The Dears, Stars, Death from Above 1979 and Metric drop in on Osaka and Toykyo for a mini-tour called "Canada Wet." Why is the tour called Canada Wet? We cannot tell you. Perhaps Emily Haines plans to throw out a case of bottled water, in keeping with her behaviour at the Mod Club show, when a crowd-pacifying maneuver was required. Wet or......

Lately, Toronto audiences have been no strangers to the diverse talents in Japanese alternative music. The appearance of Damo Suzuki a couple of years back at Wavelength was a nice surprise, and the "melodic instrumental noise unit " known as Mono put on a fantastic display of intensity this past summer at Harbourfront during a set at the Beats, Breaks and Culture Festival. And of course, there's Ron Burd, director of the music department at......

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......

Amid renewed concerns of the efficiency of the LCBO, the provincial government has appointed some sort of panel in attempts to modernize the liquor board. While Torontoist didn't actually sit down with panel organizer Greg Sorbara, that didn't stop us from conducting a hard-hitting interview with the Finance Minister. Here's the exclusive: Torontoist: Hi Greg! Minister Sorbara: (no answer) Torontoist: So what's all this we hear about the LCBO? Minister Sorbara: [The current system of......

In the insular world of fashion, it's old ideas that are thought to be new, and new ideas that are always old. This post-modernist approach to what we wear has fueled some of the industry's worst ideas, with sales of trucker hats and retro Converse shoes leading the charge. This seemingly never-ending cycle of new/old trends (ie. "80's are out, 90's are in") has finally reached its limit. Instead of turning to the last......