A former assistant curator at The Whitney Museum told me that the media pretty much decided our tastes, and Marshall McLuhan said The Medium was the message, which meant that things, technology, control us. Our lives grow up around our devices, like iPhones and computers. What we see on TV or the Internet dictates what we like. A musician I like said he got his work out there by paying to have it played. He created my impression that he was well-known and famous and that his was the music that people wanted to hear.