Seems we agree? But for the uninitiated, it might help to explain what he meant by "differential consumption."
We do, indeed: consumption is, among other things (utility, biological survival...), a way to mark status differences among groups of people and even individual subjects in the same group.
In that realm, consumption bypasses all the utilitarian logic and it´s value is pureley social insofar it distinguishes the consumer and at the same time, plays a continuous game of being in and out of the group.
By this logic, diferential consumption starts on the upper echelons of society that can drastically afford that diferenctiation, setting trends that permeate downwards only to cycle back in a way that the subjects of the upper echelons have to create new differences.
If utility is included along the way, well, so be it, but it´s not a necessity.
Both had evidence, just not evidence accepted by one possessing a superior perspective perhaps.
Natural sciences are great to explain the what (how do we perceive sound, how does it travel, how it is produced, how it interacts with other objects...), but the why is something that is often times irrelevant. Toole would gladly explain what are the preferences for listening, but it´s a moot point to explain why some people prefeer this or that response within the logic of his studies; he´d simply state that the preference is there.
We can, of course, hypothesize why connecting the explanation to social and personal factors, looking at tendencies we can track.