Even traditional art often tries to do more than compress concepts, it tries to express the inexpressible.
Linguistic determinism/relativity (Sapir-Worf, etc) explains some of it. People can FEEL that their thoughts are being constrained by language, but they don't know how to express that and maybe don't even consciously realize that it's their real problem. They just figure out that art makes it feel a little better so they do art.
If you could hear music on the surface of Mars without a space suit, I’m pretty sure it would sound quite different.
Of course, the sound that non-electrical instruments make is indeed dependent on the atmosphere in which they are played, assuming the same motions etc. You could probably make a violin produce the exact same sounds that it does on Earth playing it on Mars, but you'd have to play it differently than you do here. But even this doesn't apply to electrical instruments - Jimi Hendrix would sound the same if he could somehow play on the surface of Mars.
In that sense, I think any form of atmosphere, it will have its own music but it would probably not sound great in other atmospheres.
Also, any atmosphere can carry any sound wave for at least some distance. It takes more or less energy to do so, and if the medium attenuates rapidly, you have to start with higher frequencies so that the right frequency reaches your audience, but that's it. You need different instruments to play in different atmospheres, sure, but not different music. And electrical instruments actually work exactly the same regardless of the medium.
It is also possible that people are listening to the music for reasons other than the music itself (community, feelings of superiority, etc.)
Either way, it sure does explain the popularity. If you consider it as predictability instead of compression, it might make more sense. Listeners have an expectation on what music sounds like and popular music is going to ride that line between the listeners expectations and something more original and stray from those expectations.
I think this could also be why AI music is so bad, because it can hit the listener's expectations, but the ways that it strays from them are seemingly random, which is why a big reason to why it is so uncanny.
As an example, EDM music is highly predictable, and highly popular.
African tribal drum music is also highly predictable, while also being complex in poly-rhythmic ways.
Yet it's way more fun if the music evolves and takes twists you don't expected. I actually get quite aggressive from to predictable music, basically most modern pop music, but I guess that's highly subjective. For me good music must be intellectual exhaustive.
(Collins dictionary, noun 'theory')