I mean, if you consider what critics don't like to be bad, then yes, critics being ignored would be a bad thing for what gets produced. My point is that what critics think is bad is entirely subjective and not everyone will agree with them. If you start from thinking of critics as "on top", then sure, you'll end up with a race to the bottom without them, but if you think of critics having their own potential motives and their opinions not being some gold standard of what constitutes "good art", then it's not so obvious. Using TFA as an example, is it more likely that first and third albums are actually objectively better more often than not than second albums, and what everyone else thinks is actually wrong, or is it more likely that the critics have a distorted view on things?

> I expect an (ironically academic) argument about how monomaniacal focus on mass-market appeal doesn't necessarily entail a race to the bottom.

If the above sounds too academic and pedantically rejecting the idea of mass-market appeal entailing a race to the bottom, let's turn the question around: why are you assuming that the only two options focusing on mass-market appeal or focusing on what critics think? Do you really think that there wouldn't be any music produced for a niche audience if not for critics? There's plenty of existing music that isn't produced for mass market appeal already, and I have trouble believing that it exists only because of critics rather than in spite of them.