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) "bandwagon" effect.
Really, you would be better off simply listening to music that you independently like, rather than spending finite resources to change your aesthetic preferences in a different arbitrary direction, and that cost is the consequence. My point, then, is that I agree with you in that there are instrumental reasons to permit such hysteresis in your aesthetic preferences, such as the improved ability to relate to others -- and this likely outweighs the above harm.
In the more general case, though, it would not help you to permit such a "bandwagon" adjustment in the direction of, for example, "liking" to listen to materials science lectures filled with incorrect models. Though you may think that you can "draw the distinction", and avoid absorbing the incorrect materials science into your beliefs, the reality is that ape brains are very poor about handling this kind of dissonance.
I hope my position and concerns are clearer and more intuitive now.
I think we agree on the "broad brush" aspects of the problem (in particular that it's really about the specifics here).
Thank you for the example of fashionable materials science lectures, I now agree on that point.
The specifics here are interesting, though, so I'll take it further.
Discounting values for path-dependency has an appealing elegance, but as a general principle it is, I think, unsound. Any value that saturates has such a path-dependence: I enjoy eating, then I become full, then I no longer enjoy eating. I enjoy learning about linear a...
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.