"Where once a musician would spend months praying that her demo reached the ear of the right A&R scout, now MySpace and GarageBand allow her to reach anyone, anywhere across the world."

No, it's actually still a huge amount of work to get any kind of success in the music or fine art worlds. Now, you get to be your own marketing team, label, and booking agency. And the labels wait to see who wins that game, then grabs them.

I think that's the pertinent question. Can you web really be used to rise above the noise or is it still a mainstream media world?

Well phrased.

"Creatives"?

As opposed to the rest of humanity, code-named "chopped liver"... ;-)