If a radio is on but there is no one listening to it, does it still play music? I say no; sure it produces sound, but music exists only in the mind of the listener, as a complex interaction between perceived sounds in short term memory, experiences musical and non-musical in long term memory and expectation shaped by the above. In fact, it is fallacious to think of music as a complete structure as laid out on a score, which you can examine without temporaneity. Music is heard, therefore it is.
Good music, then, might be that which sustains the listener's attention for its entirety, since only then does the music exist entirely. It is difficult to offer much more considering the diversity of listeners. There are of course listeners who would disagree, preferring music which stays in the background without distracting them. It is debatable whether or not they are truly listening to the music (and hence if they qualify as listeners), but music has been shown in some instances to affect even passive listeners. Whatever the case, everyone can define his own idea of good music.
Could this criterion extend to other forms of the arts (and indeed aesthetics) as well? Perhaps, for those arts with temporal (e.g. movies) and quasi-temporal (e.g. literature) aspects. This is not to say that capturing the attention of the perceiver is the only criterion for ranking works of art. It is possible to state, with a considerable degree of certainty, that one piece of art is better than another. Any Mozart symphony is likely to be better than a string of notes a monkey trained in musical notation might write. Beauty is neither completely objective nor subjective. So, if the radio is on but there is no one listening to it, turn it off and save electricity.
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