What is "good" music?

Completely missing the point of what I'm saying. You're talking about preference. If you want to know whether cow blood is good or bad you'd have to look at how a body reacts to it. If it contains any nutrients and won't make you ill then it could easily be considered good, in spite of it seeming gross, which is preference.

Just as with music, if someone is off key or pitchy (yo dawg!) then they are a bad singer. If someone puts together a bunch of unpleasant sounds then it is bad music. It may still be music by definition, but it's not good music. Someone could still easily enjoy a pitchy voice or a bunch of banging symbols but that doesn't make it good.

I just misunderstood what you meant by tolerance. There are plenty of examples I can think of regarding music in other parts of the world that most of us would find horrible because of what we think of as good. There are people in those parts that find it perfectly fine. Language plays a pretty nice role in that, considering some languages are tonal and hard to really sing in the sense we think of singing. Does that mean everyone in that area of the world has horrible taste in music? The music they listen to is bad? But they enjoy it, it's sounds that are enjoyable to them but not enjoyable to you. Does this mean they've gained a tolorance from that music you consider bad?

Think of tribal music. Tribes that attach a deep meaning to the songs, and even if it's a bunch of clattering of random wood-made primative instruments with "ALALALALALAA LBA BLA BLA ALALAL GOO GOO HA GAMA LALALALA" to you, they genuinely enjoy it and dance to it. Everyone in this tribe has bad taste. They don't follow the absolute law of what makes a sound good and what makes it bad, right?

But what makes their music different? Why do they like their music? It's a part of their culture, and it's different from what your culture perceives as good music. To them, the music may have spirit to it, it may have some symbolic meaning. You can't see it in this way even if they explain it to you. For you, it's sitll just clattering.

It'd mean that you would have to adapt to liking their music, just as they would have to adapt to liking yours.

Tell me if I'm still off. I do believe we're talking about the same thing here.

This whole entire thread is retarded.
It's like they failed the entire concept of "Fact vs Opinion"
If you're trying to make a difference between something "Good as in preference" and "Good because it's true" then you need to go back to grade school and reteach yourself what is fact and what is opinion. Anything that is an opinion is a taste. Anything you say is good or bad because simply the way it's preformed is also an opinion. There is no such thing as "Good music" or "bad music"

I think what's being argued here is more in the sense of something being inherently perceived as bad (to go to an extreme, a sound so piercingly loud it ruptures the ear drums) that we pretty much pick up on as humans.

Even things that most cultures perceive as something horrible, like death or rape, is seen entirely different through other cultures. That's were things draw the line. Of course, this is talking a bit more on a wide scale as we're thinking globally. But if you shrink that down, you'll see it's important to understand this before thinking of certain music as horrible "by musical law" built into humans.