Would you pay $600 a month to rent a closet? : Rising cost of rehearsal space in Toronto

Furthermore, the combination of declining wages and rising rents has led to the displacement of artists in Toronto. [...] Between the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2010 my band leased a musical rehearsal space at the corner of Front Street East and Sherbourne Street East. [...] Yet for the past several years the neighborhood has been gentrifying, and in the summer of 2010 my band gave up their studio at Front and Sherbourne due to unmanageable increases in rent. [...] Fluctuations in the Global and Canadian Music Industry Since the advent of the illegal peer-to-peer music downloading software Napster in 1999, as well as the introduction and rise of CD burning technology, the value of recorded music has literally plummeted. [...] This paper places its focus on independent musicians who offer the best window of competition for space in Toronto as they make up the majority of the local music the industry.