From Tehran to Toronto: Meet Cash, the Man Behind the Weeknd and XO

Six years after upending his life for music, Amir "Cash" Esmailian is seeing his roll of the dice pay off. Now responsible for steering the career of one of pop's most unlikely crossover stars, the savvy manager is sitting on top of the world — Chris Martins, Complex

Google plans a 12-acre high-tech city in Toronto

Google's parent company, Alphabet, has applied to develop a strip of land in downtown Toronto in order to create a brand new high-tech city "from the Internet up." The application is the latest initiative from Sidewalk Labs LLC, the company's urban innovation unit, and is part of a vision to create a large-scale urban district modelled after a tech company — Fortune

Amazon adds free calls and messages to Echo

Users can place a call through using their device at home to their family member’s app or friends can call each other from enabled devices to the other — Daily Mail

Downtown Music Publishing bolsters team with 10 new hires

The news comes soon after a shopping spree for the company that includes deals with Ryan Tedder, Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe, Benny Blanco and Naughty Boy and Nashville-based publishing house Big Yellow Dog — MBW

Hearst funds video expansion for music publisher Kobalt

$75m injection to help online video growth, valuing London-based group at $775m — FT

Drake has 9 of Cash Money's Top 20 biggest songs of all time

This week, Billboard released an interview with Cash Money co-founders Birdman and Slim where they spoke on the incredible legacy of the major label. At the end of the interview, the outlet revealed the label’s Top 20 hottest hits of all time since they’ve been established, and it includes nine songs in total from Drake — XXL

Rebranded SFX hires ex-Universal exec as CRO

LiveStyle—the rebranded version of SFX—has hired ex-Universal exec Chris Monaco as Chief Revenue Officer, Brand Partnerships and Sponsorships — MBW

Canadians say ticket bots a ‘huge problem,’ but divided on solution

A digital Angus Reid Institute poll of 1,517 Canadian adults released Monday found that eight in 10 supported making ticket bots illegal – with the same proportion saying that tickets should not be considered a commodity and that that buying them to resell for profit is “unfair.” But they were split down the middle, literally 50-50, over whether government or industry should take responsibility for the changing ticket marketplace — Josh O'Kane, Globe and Mail

Fraudster or folk hero? The story of Kim Dotcom

Veteran New Zealand filmmaker Annie Goldson explores the paradoxes of the tech eccentric in her new documentary, Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web, which just had its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs — Nora Young, CBC

Central Terminal group ends negotiations with Canadian developer

The announcement put a sudden end to Canadian developer Harry Stinson's bid to redevelop the Central Terminal into an office, hotel and entertainment complex, with hundreds of new housing units on the property — The Buffalo News

How Canada's hip-hop history can guide its cultural future

Canada is cool everywhere except in Canada, and Mark Campbell just wants his country to catch up to what the rest of the world believes. An adjunct professor at Ryerson University’s School of Media and a Senior Research Associate at the FCAD Forum for Cultural Strategies, Campbell's sustained academic career stems from a lifelong devotion to hip-hop. He DJ’d as a teen, hosted two shows in the ‘90s on campus and community radio, and, in 2009, founded the Northside Hip Hop Archive to digitally preserve a culture that gave him so much — Jordan Darville, Fader

The history of electronic music as visualized on a circuit diagram of a 1950s theremin

When it comes to the musicians who took this technology and transformed it into avant-gardism and dance records, the relationships are complex and perhaps impossible to fully represent in simple terms given the number of indirect influences through sampling technology. But “Electric Love” does an admirable job of showing how diffuse and diverse the music made by analogue and digital technology has been — Open Culture

Hackers find celebrities’ weak links in their vendor chains

The cyber-security of Lady Gaga was compromised recently – Nicole Perlroth, NY Times

IMAX shooting for a bigger role

Canadian firm injecting its technology into blockbusters to boost share of ticket sales – Ryan Faughnder, LA Times

Recalling when Bruce Allen was considering running for mayor of Vancouver

In a 2001 interview, the music industry legend slags the then-mayor – Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight

Previously unreleased recordings by The Gun Club surface

Led by the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the US band had a huge influence – LA Weekly