Quality in music

If there's someone to blame for this wall of text, it's Nelson and his legendary "mauvaise foi."

So here we go: yesterday we listened to some pretty lame songs in my opinion, which started a conversation with Nelson and Payz, that went south pretty quickly.
Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams. I got confused, thought it was Ace of Base, and blurted out something like "who cares, it's all the same shit anyways."
That triggered Nelson, who brought up the ridiculous point that preludes were interchangeable which is beyond ludicrous, and got me started.

Here are some Bach preludes : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oFjk0HynY4
Chopin's take on the genre : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqXYIteAfNs
Villa Lobos' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q7UlMiMQ-s
Messiaen's : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2pwTP7g7xE
The list is endless, and composers still write preludes to this day, and still come up with ideas to make them sound unique, fresh, new, interesting.

Saying that all preludes are interchangeable is like arguing that all short stories are too, because you know, they have a beginning, an end, and stuff happens in between. Absurd.

Now to my main point : yes there is such a thing as objective ways to measure quality in music.
I'm far from being an expert in dance music, and I'm quite certain that if one spends enough time, there are jewels to be found. That being said, there is no question that these songs :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d73tiBBzvFM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOZuxwVk7TU
Are all based on the same formula. A few gimmicks, usually two, repeated ad nauseam. Whether you like or not the gimmick being used is completely subjective, however the compositional device : repeating the same idea over and over again, is quite shallow. Sure, the sounds being used are different, the singers don't have the same skills; that being said, the songs themselves are all shallow. Very little happens, they are formatted to do one thing, and although one can argue they are very successful at doing that, that in of itself does not qualify as "quality". 
Their purpose is to make people dance.
The musical idea undergoes no evolution, it is not transformed, put in a different perspective. It is repeated over and over again, obsessively.

It is possible to make repetitive music very interesting. Take this piece for instance : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OrfZI-JRXY
It is also possible to make great music with shit lyrics : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpe35TjOfyM
So is composing dance music that's musically interesting even if you take away the dancing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArBPcTCAKmA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZkIAVGlfWk

The genre itself (dance music) does not justify mediocrity. There is this amazing series of videos by the classical pianist / composer Nahre Sol who digests different genres and turns them into classical compositions : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWfb9JKfNXA&list=PL0UfT1ar7nMfyYHSgG3ofHBbQK9hJJ83f
I believe the same could be done with dance music.
This guy (Andrew Huang) : https://www.youtube.com/c/andrewhuang/videos does amazing videos of his creative process (he's an electronic music composer/musician). I believe it is possible to create amazing dance music, that both has compositional depth, and stays true to the genre (music you can dance to in a nightclub).
Commercial music however, has taken the other route. There is very little space left for creativity, because the music industry executives are lazy, greedy, and quite incompetent, to put it mildly.

Just like there's nothing wrong with enjoying a burger at MacDonald's, there's no question that the food itself is of lower quality (as in there is less effort put into creating it, and the overall result lacks depth). The same goes for literature, movies, etc.

I'd rather live in my 75m² flat than in the Versailles palace. However in terms of architecture, there is a difference of quality. The fact that one feels like home and the other doesn't, is irrelevant.

To sum it up, it's not just a question of taste - and again, I think it's perfectly fine to enjoy listening to shallow music - there is such a thing as quality in works of art, and it is possible to measure it somewhat objectively, and it does make sense to make comparisons.