The music industry, especially in the punk-rock/pop-punk genres is a very clear example of media globalization. The first few processes are very independent and DIY. Bands get together and play music for crowds. To get more of a reputation, these bands will do two things, sell merchandise in the form of t-shirts, stickers or self-made CDs, or create Myspace music or purevolume.com accounts on which to post their songs and make them available to a wider group of people.
After this, if the band is successful enough and they get lots of traffic on those sites or sell a lot of their merchandise, they usually go on tour and play shows again (if the band is not successful the process usually ends here). At times the success is so high that they may get radio time, being interviewed or just having their songs played on air, reaching an even larger market and making a whole different demographic aware of them than the scenesters scanning the internet forums and band pages for something new to listen to.
The next step is getting signed. Usually these bands are signed on a smaller label like Fueled By Ramen or Drive-Thru Records, but occassionally larger labels will sign them and market their music to very different and spaced out locales (Japan has always been a huge consumer of anything new, cool and American). At this point, with new CDs out and a bigger hype, these bands begin being talked about by people on internet forums, etc., across the world. These people will have varying exposure and knowledge of the bands, but are related in the fact that the name is known to them and the interest is there to discuss them.
Usually at this point more shows are played, huge tours are booked and the merchandise skyrockets. With interviews and posters and TV appearances, what was at first a small garage band has turned into a globalized medium, appearing across a number of different types of media in a wide variety of places.
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