That privileged few space can exist with well known large bands. Look at Tool for example, to this day there's arguments about Jambi's lyrics being, damn my eyes, dim my eyes, or jambi eyes, or all three. Not everyone has the volition to search for it and think about it or dig about. You can be bad listening to this music.
But I get where you're coming from. Steam Powered Giraffe in stadium would be nothing like coming across them on the street and dropping money in the donation box. Not the same experience by a longshot.
It's like all art is, situational, and there's always exceptions.
And it is a little different for each medium of course. I've witnessed fans of Ice and Fire rage and GoT sudden popularity, and it's just for me at least a "took you long enough to catch up" but if there's a indie game no one else knows about it, spread that freaking word. You read "oh I saw that before it got picked up for sundance" once in awhile on the internet and that's like the cope de grace of just saying it to seem cool, ya know?
It's like "girl gamers" versus "Gamer girls" as I put it, yeah, there's authenticity to some of them, but some are being manipulative too. It's a mix, like I said, situational, context, exceptions, situational context exceptions; I hate it when these things are treated like generalizing blankets like they're made into rules that are always true all the time, it is a law, that's the word for it. Like it's a law that all gamer girls are being manipulative or it's a law all hipsters are doing it just for the image. It's like, I was a hipster before it was cool and now I'm mad about that too. It's just, b.s. it always was. As if it has to be a quantifiable fact at all times. But that's never the way stuff works. Life has just never, ever had any binary absolutes, even night and day have an in between, like ever, it just baffles me. That's just silly human behavior trying to measure and rationalize reliably; like if this is true then this is always true. And yeah, that's not always wrong, but that's not always right either! It's a simplified primitive more distilled logic, that's not wrong, but still needs to be, or sometimes can be still expanded upon, and then that goes back to laws and the only right way and not allowing that expansions and just...
It comes down to the individual, the individual case, the individual example, the individual event, everyone is different, and that's fine but if you really need a rule or a law that is reliable that's it, the only certainty is uncertainty, everyone is different every case and example is different. It's just not always yes or no question like that ya know? But to answer the question, disliking a band because they're popular, well, I try not to dislike any music. It's like I was explaining to friend, some music is science fiction, some music is horror and some music like a comedy, ya know? And the question becomes does their popularity somehow affect their sound or change their art or the way it experienced? If they sell out for example is a different question, and if a band becomes popular they might sell out, that does stand to reason, but did they? Are they worse or better or should be glad they're getting the rcognition they finally deserve? Gray areas people. It's about the gray areas.