FWIW, I have found one of the best parts of using Digital Ocean is their fantastic documentation and tutorials. As a relative newbie, I was encouraged to deploy to a PaaS such as Heroku but grew frustrated at the black box aspect of what was going on underneath the hood. The tutorials on DO allowed me to learn and gain an understanding of how servers really work.
On your point about database services, I was able to set up Postgres on my droplet with relative ease and it has been serving me well ever since, again all thanks to clear and well made tutorials. I think if I could do it without any prior experience, most other people can too. So IMO, these providers aren't necessary at all.
> "Or do schools of music have a habit of teaching that Bach is objectively the best, as if it's a fact grounded in science?"
I don't think you're entirely accurate on why Bach is such a big name when it comes to classical music. It's not because he is viewed as some objective "best" as you seem to be so convinced of.
Western classical music as we know it today didn't really begin until Bach came around (the only exception that comes to mind immediately is Corelli who came a few decades prior). Music historians today recognize that Bach laid out the technical foundations on what Western music is itself. His development of the counterpoint is a major distinction between medieval music and the classical period that followed. As well, his Partitas for Solo Violin and Well Tempered Clavier for Piano have became and remain to this day, foundational parts of learning and improving violin/piano because they train and benchmark almost every technical ability of their instruments (at least in Western music) to such precision. To analogize to programming, it would be like a set of problems that ranged from basic recursion to debugging memory leaks and everything in between and beyond. There are of course other resources such as Kreutzer's etudes for violin but Bach is one of the first and one of the only to do so to such detail.
There are numerous of other music elements such as figured bass and dance forms that Bach contributed heavily to, but I think you get my point.
So to summarize, no, I don't think most music historians "nod their head in agreement like a brainwashed zombie". It's not that they hail Bach as some "objective best", it's because they can recognize and respect the formative effects his work had Western Classical music. He is a father of his field much like Turing of Knuth are and that deserves his praise.
> "Two hundred years ago, most popular music existed primarily as simply a support for public dancing. The audience didn't expect to sit and listen to compelling virtuosos perform."
Have to disagree with you there. The most immediate counterexample that jumps to mind is Wagner. Hugely popular and audiences went to a Wagner opera not looking to merely be entertained but for the artistic merit of his works.