A hallmark feature of mass communications and popular culture is the often vast break between encoding and decoding, and the different skills that are involved. If you write a letter to a friend and then receive one in return, you are involved in both encoding and decoding. This is not the case when you go to a movie theater and watch a movie. You are not involved in the encoding. This is merely another gloss on production versus consumption.
Class hierarchy is indeed distinct from status hierarchy, though they do frequently coincide.
Other sociologists have referred to this as the distinction between economic capital and cultural capital. On the other hand, the exaltation of high culture often depnds on the sense of its champions that it is exclusive. When it becomes too popular, it becomes debased, no longer fuctioning as a marker of distinction. Put more simply, people use cultrue to define who they are. I may listen to a certain kind of music to show that I am a high status intellectual.