It's been so long since college, I don't really remember the physics of why things build where they do, that makes some sense though. Guess I should study that wiki a little. Over time though even small currents can do the job, on the chip we are talking charge and discharge of 10s or 100s or fF, the current density of the cable much higher but so is it's capacitance.
How this all applies to audio I'd be very keen to understand. One thing to remember about our cables is that the current is carried almost entirely on the surface. It's a very thin on the cross section. Maybe some imperfections could be smoothed over by migration or something like that. A couple of impressions that I remember about cable burning is that it was more important when the conductor was being driven by a low voltage source, like a tone arm or microphone. The other thing that I vaguely remember, or maybe I drempt it hehe, was that the end effect was to "align" certain atoms or magnetic di-poles. That's all pretty fuzzy I know.
Gotta run up to grace today but I'll try to take a look and dig through some books tonight.