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This dissertation contributes to music scene and online community studies. It is an historical examination of the CBLocals music scene in the summer of 2006. This scene is located in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the website with which its participants identify. This study analyzes the CBLocals website as a cultural infrastructure of a music scene and thus positions itself to advance pre-Internet arguments about scenes. This dissertation argues that on the one hand, the Internet changes how music scenes function by increasing accessibility and mobility. On the other hand, it has left the social composition and ideological outlook of music scenes unchanged. Users celebrate the medium's possibilities and what the CBLocals website has brought to their scene. They also feel nostalgia for the practices they feel their scene has lost along the way. The result is that the most significant consequence of CBLocals.com and the Internet on the music scene is a feeling of ambivalence in its participants. In the second and third chapter, I demonstrate how local context still greatly affects the representation of the CBLocals scene. In Chapter Two, I analyze the social composition of CBLocals based on race, gender, region, class, sexuality and age. I conclude that this social composition is unaffected by technological advances. In Chapter Three, I analyze discussions of "selling out" within the scene. I conclude that regional perspectives of state-supported professionalism in music and arts inform discussions on "selling out" that are specific to the CBLocals community. The fourth chapter explores the CBLocals users' perceptions of the website and messageboard. Users celebrate a variety of benefits, such as an interactive forum, the social lubrication provided by online gossip and the ease of promoting music online. However, many users dislike what they see as the erosion of work ethic and standards of discourse that have occurred in the Internet age. These mixed emotions reflect the ambivalence resulting from the celebration of possibilities and the nostalgia emergent with new technology.

The city Umeå in northern Sweden was elected to become the European culture capital for 2014. This was a result of the city’s desire to lead the way in the new culture-driven growth that we have seen since the start of the millennium. Umeå has big plans to expand, and cultural development is the central strategy they have decided on to reach the city’s goals. Because Umeå is such a prominent music-city it is interesting to study how the music scene has been affected by this. The aim of this study is to analyse how the local music scene, both the physical and the cultural, has been affected by the way the city has used culture to advertise the city and to fuel the population growth. This has been done through mapping of the active music scenes, with interviews and through information gathered by local newspapers. When analysing this material, it became clear that after this strategy had been implemented there have been a change in the local music scene, but maybe not the one the city would have thought.

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This study explores the Portland music scene as a context in which local identity is constructed and communicated in a globalized world. Specifically, neo-localism is utilized as a theoretical lens through which the impacts of globalization were explored. Portland bands (n=8) were interviewed concerning their experiences in the local music scene. The results showed that participants conceptualized local identity as being 1) based in community, 2) culturally saturated and 3) connected to musical production. Further, results showed that participants were increasingly aware of this local identity, were aware of a global perception of this local identity and were aware of other local identities. Overall the results from this study support neo-localism as a useful conceptual lens for understanding local identity for Portland bands.

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