I have in fact noticed that comments of mine that discuss music score consistently lower than my other comments.

Did you notice that your comments (and those agreeing with you) nonetheless score higher than your critics in such discussions? (And whoever's modding you down in this thread, it's not me -- I don't use downmods against opponents when my investment in the discussion might be compromising my judgment.)

(1) It matters when determining whether a clique is learning the structure of reality or just replaying inside jokes. If the clique judges designs based on useful models that carve reality at its joints, and that use objective, unfakeable (e.g. through consensus) metrics, we should care what they think and we should be impressed those who can hit narrow targets in the design space they define. If the clique has to keep checking on whether the rest of the clique already likes something, because there really isn't a successful model ... then none of that applies. Which category do MACs fall in?

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

From the other stuff that people still like, voluntarily listen to, etc. after hundreds of years and no indoctrination.

As bad as Lady Gaga might be, where's the Music Theory PhD can that can demonstrate a superior understanding of the mind-music relationship, rather than just whine about how reality won't bend to fit his theories?

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?

The ability to make a judgment without having to first be told what your judgment should be. Layfolk who get recordings of EKM aren't doing it because it's the hot thing right now among their friends and the elite cultural arbiters told them to.

In contrast, the royalty really wouldn't tell the difference if Bell flubbed and "only" performed at the 95% percentile. While the market has spoken, it is not announcing a victory of the characteristics you claim are important: it is showing that people will buy based on hype, and we know it's hype because their market value changes when the hype is removed (as the Bell experiment showed -- no wealthy person said, "Holy s***! Let me hire you to be my personal performer! You're way undervalued here!")

It should really raise a red flag for your when you're basing your opinion on "but rich people like this stuff when they're duped!"