A lot of that hyperlocality was because the only way to hear music was to go to a live performance. The only way to enjoy a dramatic performance was to go to a

A lot of that hyperlocality was because the only way to hear music was to go to a live performance. The only way to enjoy a dramatic performance was to go to a live performance. In the era before widespread dissemination of printed materials and widespread literacy, the only way to enjoy a literary work was to—you guessed it—go to a live performance. This meant, among other things, that there was a period of time when a larger portion of the population was able to make a living (albeit not necessarily a good living) through arts performance. Jerry Lewis, for example, got into show business to support his family (this was also the case with the Marx brothers a generation earlier). As technology has increased the ability to disseminate artistic work, it has become a smaller fraction of the population gaining a wider audience. Some of the trends, e.g., streaming music, have ended up with recorded music becoming economically unviable for smaller acts (the numbers are widely disseminated so I won't get into that). Not sure where things are going from here, or what the anomalous period in human culture really was or will be.