I'm not suggesting that we believe things because others do - that's enormously different! My reasoning is as follows: Pleasure is among my terminal values; listening to this music gives me pleasure; so in the absence of important other factors in the expected utility calculation, it's A Good Thing. In this particular case, are there, in fact, other important important consequences?
True, and it is the arbitrary, non-epistemic nature of aesthetics that justifies my judgment that you do little harm by permitting the influence you describe.
But what's actually happening is that the music initially doesn't give you pleasure -- as you said, you would not be able to distinguish it from another "Radiohead" imitator that you now "don't like" -- and then you have consciously permitted (in the sense of not resisting a known phenomenon) yourself to make a path-dependent update in your tastes through a (so-called) "bandwa...
I just downloaded the latest Radiohead album, and I love it.
Thinking back, I started listening to Radiohead years ago when I found out that some of the cool kids in school were into it. With all the hype about the new album, the status/fashion processors in my brain going to ensure that I enjoy listening to it. I would probably fail a double-blind test with a bunch of imitation bands' fake "new Radiohead albums".
But I'm really enjoying listening to the album, and that doesn't seem like a bad or contradictory thing at all, even in light of the statements above. If, hypothetically, I was enjoying it for purely non-fashion reasons, then presumably that enjoyment could also be traced back though a causal chain to facts about brain development, evolutionary psychology, or whatever. But we would have no problem accepting that enjoyment as A Good Thing since explaining enjoyment does not diminish it. And so it seems in this case.