Your Argument Is Invalid

During some downtime at work today I was reading from about The Beatles in where an excerpt from the book Living Life Without Loving the Beatles by Gary Hall expressed the author’s general disdain for those who are considered massive Beatles fans but have no general knowledge of what good music really is, given the moniker of a Grade One.  Hall doesn’t blame these people for following a massive group like The Beatles because they just don’t know any better.
In his chapter about a Grade One and how to cope with their high opinions of the Fab Four, he nullifies an argument made in favor of The Beatles with an entirely moronic premise regarding lasagna.  Hall claims that by stating The Beatles are the best band ever because they sold millions upon millions of albums is like believing a Marks and Spencer pasta meal is better than one from a certain mom and pop café in Italy.  This mentality is beyond ridiculous.
I’m in complete agreement that record sales does not equate to quality product.  Comparing the music industry to a similarly distributed, yet differently experienced medium, just because Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace made money hand over fist does not mean it is a good movie.  In fact, it is God-awful and was drafting off of the legacy that the original trilogy had built over time.
However, to compare record sales to meal sales is an apples-to-oranges argument.  It is not hard to believe that a homemade dish of lasagna is going to be tastier than a frozen TV dinner version of the meal.  But that homemade meal doesn’t have the same outlet to sell its dish that the store-bought version does, so therefore of course it is not going to make as much money.
Yet, all bands and musicians have the same opportunity for the world to hear their music.  Sure, some lesser talented artists get better management, better recording gigs, and better publicity than others and therefore reap the benefits of more records sold than those with more music aptitude and song-writing quality, but the outlet is all the same.  Musical notes are put down on vinyl/CD/Internet download/whatever, and the entire masses have an opportunity to evaluate the music for themselves.  Good music will likely attract the most listeners and in turn generate more records from a particular group/singer.  It is a level playing field for every musician who strives for their music to be heard.
Grandma Lucella from Milan, Italy, isn’t going to stand a chance at competing with a brand name TV dinner company.  Sure, anyone who tastes her meal will undoubtedly give the thumbs up when comparing it to a Marks and Spencer product, but how can she be fairly judged when her only outlet is a small café in Milan?  It is not possible to bring every person in the world to her shop for a taste of lasagna, but Marks and Spencer do have the capability to reach the masses through neighborhood grocery stores.  So what about packaging the Italian café meal?  Then you lose the flavor of making it in-house and therefore the product is not the same.
The lasagna argument is just not the same when comparing it to music.  The Beatles certainly were lucky to hit the big time when they did and many of their songs probably came in higher on the charts because of name recognition during the middle and later parts of their group’s career, but to fairly deny The Beatles as greatest band ever is going to take a greater line of reasoning than Hall’s lasagna parable.