[apoverton]

From the article:

“The authors found studies with high-quality design, such as those which used a group of active controls – children who did not learn music but instead learned a different skill, such as dance or sports, for example – showed no effect of music education on cognitive or academic performance.“

If you can acquire the skills you mentioned doing other activities then it doesn’t mean learning music is worthless just means music doesn’t hold a special ability to do it relative to certain other activities.