First, a remark addressed to the two people who downvoted the grandparent: your behavior makes no sense at all. My best guess is that you disapprove of discussion of music on LW. But not only is that an unreasonable position to take, it wouldn't explain why you didn't downvote neighboring comments.

(I have in fact noticed that comments of mine that discuss music score consistently lower than my other comments. I can understand if some of the "mathy" types of people that populate this site have a perception that topics relating to art and music are "fluffy" and unprestigious, but what I've never been able to understand is why this perception doesn't seem to get updated once they run into people who are similarly "mathy" but also interested in art and music.)

Now to Silas's comment:

(1) On "insular cliques": not all cliques are equal. There exist "insular" (which I suppose means low-population) cliques such that impressing them has value.

(2) Those examples certainly did not imply (nor were intended to imply) that all of e.g. Mozart's value comes from e.g. EKM. The point is just that someone today can appreciate something like EKM enough to voluntarily listen to it on their own time .... or to put it on ringtones, etc.

Well, then where does the rest of Mozart's value come from?

You're hiding the work of your argument behind the phrases "someone today" and (especially) "something like". Who counts as an eligible appreciator? What music counts as "something like EKM"? After all, on my view, the work of MACs is like EKM (and inherits prestige thence). A distinction that places Mozart and Lady Gaga on one side and Schoenberg and Salieri on the other doesn't carve musical reality at its joints. (To do that, you'd have to put Mozart and Schoenberg and Salieri on one side, and Gaga on the other.)

(3) I don't dispute that Bell is (by the appropriate, unfakeable, non-parochial) metrics better than most other violinists. What I claim is that achieving the skill difference between him and the bottom of the e.g. 95th percentile is way past the point of diminishing returns -- that, while better, it is not so many times better to justify anything close to his proportionally higher income (on musical talent alone).

In the present context, this is a distinction without a difference. The point is that I could simply say to you "the market has spoken" with regard to Bell, just as you are wont to do with EKM. What criterion of "justification" are you appealing to here?