Internet killed local music scenes?

I’ve been mulling over an article in last weeks Guardian:
June 10th Article in Guardian Has the internet killed local music scenes?
Hazel Sheffield

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/10/local-music-scenes-internet

The main premise of this article is unlike previous generations sounds are no longer attached to places. She gives high profile examples of local scenes and such as Merseybeat, Paisley underground, Grunge and Madchester and says that these scenes are unlikely to ever emerge again. She says that now scenes are being established online by “bloggers and internet communities drawing parallels in sound, though their bedrooms are hundreds of miles apart.”
She cites the internet and advances in how we access music digitally as destroying the physical importance of music. This is something that I have thought about and questioned people about in my interviews and it does seem to be the case certainly with the younger interviewees that they are no longer in purchasing or collecting music, She also gives examples of how bands are making it big before they leave their bedroom rather than cutting their teeth in local clubs. While I think this was a much hyped anecdote a couple of years ago when a number of people such as Lily Allen and Sandy Thom were reportedly signed to a record label on the back of songs they had uploaded onto their myspace profiles. These stories have been told and retold on regular occasions but I think that things have moved on from this. Very few record companies are actually signing bands and they recognise that the majority of the money a band will make will be through touring and playing live. If a band has not proven themselves on the live scene then they are unlikely to be signed.

Her argument raises some similar points to ones I have been grappling with: particularly the democratising effect of the internet and the speed at which connections and global conversations occur, she wonders if local scenes have the opportunity to develop and I think that is something I could examine in more detail.
She also refers to the “atomisation of local scenes” which is a bit fatalistic in my opinion, some of the people she has interviewed do not seem to agree with this premise and she does identify some local scenes, which she says tend to be more short lived and diverse, this is probably the case but I think this is the same with most things in society it is just a by product of the twenty first century. One of the main things I feel she is missing from this article is the reason why people become involved in local scenes and how so much more emerges from a scene such as the collective experience or the buzz that my respondents often refer to, I think it is this that will continue to sustain scenes. We do still want to go to gigs and we do want people to be our filters.
The notion that the internet has made the death of local scenes possible but not inevitable is also interesting to me. I am exploring scenes as a field flow rather than a field site. This is recognition that a scene does not have to exist around a particular venue as might have previously been the case.