What this means to business-people/developers: you can have all the functionality and low prices in the world, but if no one can get what they want in time, it's all useless. There are no sales if the user can't get to the "Sell" button. There are no ad views if the content is hidden somewhere in .html files or is unreadable.
Actually art is not really about beauty. Serious art is a lot like business, but with one important difference: art is about attracting a very select, discerning audience (while ignoring or even actively repelling the non-discerning audience). The way art works is that this very select, discerning audience will be willing to pay money to establish that very fact. In other words, art is about extracting money in exchange for exclusivity. Most businesses, of course, work in an entirely different mode: they extract money in exchange for service.
On the other hand, it is also not necessarily about beauty. I've played plenty of ugly music that is still great.
Speaking as an artist, I can assure you that is exactly what art is about. Additionally: all people are the same, and have always been.
Even when you do not actively try to play for an audience which has exclusivist tendencies, your art (music) will invariably end up used in a very specific way. There are invisible relations of power behind most of the things that people do, art and music being no exception. In school, we were taught that it is not nice to be exclusivist, however that is not how the world works. Similarly, in school we were taught that desiring power is a bad thing, while it isn't in fact (as long as this desire is productive).
Take a simple example: a guy meets a girl (or the other way around) and asks her what music she listens to. Music taste is a way in which connections are established between individuals (connections between people have a lot to do with power so stay with me...). Now this connection will mean relatively little if the music that both the girl and the guy like can be commonly heard on the radio. The connection will mean a lot if the music they both like is relatively obscure. And it's not just music. Anything, really, that is rare and is shared between two individuals becomes special -- i.e. becomes a nearly fetishistic object signifying the commonality between the two individuals. It's very beautiful actually. And it's all based on exclusivity. Side-note: the "commonality" I am talking about probably has a lot to do with Shannon's entropy and information transferred between the two individuals.
Fair enough. I suppose I can only speak for myself, and to a certain extent I can speak for other artists I know and have talked to about these sorts of things. So yes, please assume that everything here is a gross generalization. Also, please accept my apologies is this whole digression is off-topic. It is something of particular interest to me. If I should shut up, just let me know.
What you're talking about is a popular line of research for musicologists. The way art is used to reinforce social bonds is an important part of why people make art. That doesn't mean that, for artists, that is what art is "about." Any object once it's released into the ether will be used or misused as the people who encounter it see fit. I am responding to the notion that artists are craven elitists whose primary goal is to have their art acquired by rich people in order for them to show how much better they are than the plebes. Rich people do and have done that, but in my experience, if that layer enters into the creation of the art itself, it is generally the artist thinking, "how can I trick some dumb tasteless (bourgeois) rich person into giving me money so I can keep making art." Artists make art because they have to. If it were about getting a paycheck they would have gone into investment banking.
There are some people running around painting or playing a musical instrument who are not like this, who do it because they majored in it in school and some inertia keeps them doing it even though they have no inner drive and no commitment to producing authentic work. I've met them, and I've seen them play. Frequently they are stunning technicians, but I tend to take the 19th century Aestheticist view and say that what they produce is not usually art. Given a double-blind test, could I distinguish between those who have standards and those who don't? I don't know. Again, I like the old-fashioned view that what matters is the-thing-itself.
I am by no means suggesting that artists do not or should not take their audience into account. Art is not effective if it conveys nothing to anyone but the artist. Also, clearly, artists produce different work depending on whom it is for. Mozart, for instance, had a different style for his "public" works, such as symphonies and concertos, than in his music that is intended for connoisseurs, such as string quartets. I don't think this is the same as what you're talking about, though. Taking into account comprehension levels of your audience is part of the craft, and does not preclude producing an authentic product. It does not mean that aesthetic goals are secondary to financial ones.
Sorry, but in reading this and your other reply, it seems more like you're projecting your own issues concerning power onto art itself.
Regarding projection: where did I talk about my own personal issues?
As for projection, it seems like you reduce all of art to power transactions. Sometimes people just make things, you know?
They do, but once you get into anything that matters, you enter power transactions. I am personally not very interested in things (including art) that don't matter; perhaps you differ with me on that.
Regarding aesthetics, I used to like sunset photos, then I used to like black-and-white photography with people in it, then I started to like pensive neutral landscape photography, and now they all make me vomit. Where does aesthetics come into this? Whatever it is, it is so fluid and relative to social norms and self-image (power structures again!) that it is probably not worth talking about without that context.