>it's really odd the degree to which Wikipedia's policies enshrine commercial journalism outlets as the Arbiters of Notability.

It is somewhat of an irony that notability probably is bolstered more by fairly small run periodicals and books than it is by things like fan websites.

Except they do care how popular the musician is. It's just that instead of setting the threshold themselves they choose to pass the buck and defer to journalists and other groups.

1. You are both correct and incorrect. The most well written about musicians are the most popular by definition within the group of people who write about musicians. A) This does not mean that those musicians are popular within some sizeable portion of the general population. B) The preferences of the people writing about musicians (that wikipedia will accept as a source) are not guaranteed to be representative of the population at large, in fact I'd wager that essentially guaranteed to be not true at different points in time and for different genres.

Wikipedia is choosing to conflate the popularity of an artist amongst the writing group and the popularity in the broader public. And when the two groups disagree, they are choosing to go with those who write rather than with the broader public.

2. This isn't about "the sources provided shot that he's popular", it's do we acknowledge that their contribution is defined as popular. Dragon Ball Z is/was an incredibly popular and influential anime.

I guess all it takes now is for someone at WIRED who loved Dragon Ball Z to publish an article or two about them and they suddenly become notable.