This isn't true today! At the moment, you are being upvoted and I am being downvoted. (And actually downvoted, as in negative scores, as opposed to merely being upvoted less.)

Look again, woe-is-me-sto. Most of my comments have gone negative, almost none of yours have. Someone recently came by and downmodded everything I posted -- someone who isn't justifying it anywhere (which is about the level of justification MACs can give for their field). (I'm not going to insult you by suggesting you would dip to these tactics, of course; I have far too much respect for you.)

I don't know actually know any music theory Ph.D. who whines in the manner you describe, though it's not exactly clear what you mean. What theories, and what aspect of reality isn't bending?

What would they have to do in order to demonstrate a "superior understanding of the mind-music relationship"?

The very same thing that I or Michael Vassar or anyone else mentions whenever this topic is brought up: if higher-level students of music theory really do know the secrets of the music-mind relationship, why can't they take that skill, pair it with existing record companies' hype machines, and outcompete existing, non-academic hitmakers, without having to tell people in advance "you should like this because the elite ivory tower deems it good"?

Are you kidding? Of course they are! I would assign a high probability to the hypothesis that the overwhelming majority of the popular interest in eighteenth-century music is driven by status-signaling.

A high proportion of people with a broad, indiscriminate collection of classical music might be, but those weren't the ones I was using to make the point. You're using the presence of hype victims I wasn't referring to, to deny the significance of the non-hype victims I was referring to.

I was referring to the everyday mouthbreather who for the first time hears EKM (perhaps in the Movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), then decides to add it to their playlist, not knowing which elite endorses it. Such people continue to listen to it privately even in the rare case that their friends disapprove of it. Or to the person who hears Paganini's Op. 1 in a similar context and wants it on their playlist, not realizing it was written ~200 years ago (because it sounds creative and experimental).

(But yes, there are cases where a member of the elite will decree that some long-unknown composer is now high status again and you better get on the bandwagon. I believe this is what happened to Bach -- IIRC, most of his fame now is due to someone reviving interest of him in the 19th century, after he had been forgotten. Which itself is proof of the ephemerality of the boundaries MACs draw.)

In any case, I agree that there can be information cascades in which fame builds on itself. The difference is that I find the fame derived this way uninformative, while you seem to be willing to defend this arbitrary, artifical set as indicative of a fundamental aspect of reality about music (rather than social phenomenon) ... at least, when it supports compositions you approve of.

Maybe not on a single occasion, but over the long term (i.e. if Bell descended to the 95th percentile consistently), they surely would. More specifically, elite musicians and critics would notice, and the "royalty" would follow their opinion.

Only if experts (who have pointlessly wasted time making measurements this precise) alert them that this music isn't high enough in status. The point is, it has nothing to do with the musical quality itself, just conspicuous consumption. Joshua Bell agrees that his income -- and indeed, self-worth -- come from pre-validation, and not from some widely, objectively-discernable measure of his performance quality. Why won't you?