Marlon Williams at the Gasometer Hotel, Collingwood. Credit:David Harris "The northward trajectory and the clearing out of the south-eastern suburbs is very clear, and what's also interesting is that there are clusters forming and tightening," Shaw says. "There's one in the CBD, one in the Gertrude Street, Smith Street, and Johnston Street area of Collingwood and Fitzroy, plus this trajectory up Sydney Road and High Street in Brunswick and Northcote respectively." St Kilda's status as a home – both logistically and spiritually – of Melbourne's live music scene has been slowly eroding. Venues as diverse as The Palace, the Greyhound Hotel, and the tiny performance space at Pure Pop Records have been shuttered, and only last week the Esplanade Hotel – the emblematic St Kilda live music venue – announced that it was shutting to refurbish over winter. More than 20 years ago, a young Melbourne music fan named Richard Moffat got his first gig as a band booker. His preparation for the job was simple: he went to The Tote in Collingwood and copied out the address book of that band's booker, Meanies bassist Wally Kempton. More than half the numbers Moffat wrote down began with 537 – St Kilda in the era of seven digit phone numbers. "For me at that time, St Kilda was a den of iniquity, a badlands, and I was very happy to go there for an adventure but it was seedy and otherworldly," recalls Moffat. "Now it doesn't have any kind of definitive identity."

The Prince of Wales Hotel on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda. Credit:Scott Barbour The story of Melbourne's always changing dispersal of pubs and clubs is being one step ahead of gentrification, the tale everyone now knows of musicians and other artists moving into an inner-city suburb, making it attractive, and then being priced out. Gentrification's wave is pushing musicians into Melbourne's inner-north, and increasingly the inner-west. Last year APRA AMCOS, the body that collects and distributes royalties to artists, revealed that Brunswick's 3056 postcode had the highest concentration of registered songwriters in Australia, followed by Northcote. Young musicians are drawn to the sense of community, and the band nights they organise lead to new venues. My Left Boot at Cherry Rock. Credit:Carbie Warbie "People mainly go to see shows on the north side, Fitzroy and Brunswick especially. Both suburbs have a name as places to go and see music," says Nick Sowersby, the 25-year-old whose expansive dream-pop project Sunbeam Sound Machine records in his Collingwood bedroom, rehearses in Abbotsford, and plays across the northern suburbs at established rooms such as The Tote as well as comparatively new destinations such as Howler and Spotted Mallard, both in Brunswick, and Collingwood's Gasometer Hotel (on Thursday,May 28).

If the venues have moved, so have the underlying expectations. Moffat, who stepped back last year from booking rooms such as Richmond's Corner Hotel and the Northcote Social Club to concentrate on annual festivals such as Falls at Lorne, says the idea of a pub or club being the centre of a community has passed. Younger music fans are seeing the band they want and leaving, reducing the per-head spend the venue takes. Howler in Brunswick. "Everyone cares about who's playing, not where they're playing. Band X can be playing in a toilet block on a Monday night, or the coolest venue or a Friday night and it will make no difference to people: they'll just go to wherever they are," Moffat says. "It's the band who has all the power, not the context of where they're performing. No venue would say they have a sustainable culture of bands." Shaw says while Melbourne still has an impressive amount of venues hosting gigs, many of the smaller newcomers are on precarious regulatory terms. The demands of the building and planning codes makes it increasingly difficult for "hole in the wall type venues" to put down roots. "They might be able to establish, go under the radar a little bit if they don't need to do extensive work on the venue to open up," she adds, "but as soon as they need to apply for a building permit to expand or something like that, the compliance regulations kick in."

Melbourne's advantage is publicans like the oft-cited James Young, who runs Cherry Bar, are live music devotees and were raised on the community radio ethos. A decade ago Peter Foley was hosting house gigs, but now he's overseeing the successful Caravan Music Club at the Oakleigh RSL and has just opened the 400-capacity Memo Music Hall behind the St Kilda RSL on Acland Street. "There's a lot of risk, not a lot of money. If you're interested in money, run a McDonalds franchise," says Foley, still tired the morning after the first of three sold-out Sports reunion gigs. Memo is bucking the trend by opening up a St Kilda live venue as others close, but appealing to an older audience – the new St Kilda – may be the key to it prospering. "The music scene has had to adapt, so while we've seen some iconic music venues from the past close, we've seen others emerge," says Ashley Admiraal, the chairman of Music Victoria. "Just when you think it's copped another hit, something new pops up. Where it's at is different every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night."