What you describe is not art, it's derivative commercial products that use "art" skills. True artist almost by definition does not care about audience, or tries to predict what they will like.
And yet if you don’t have an audience, what is the point? Even the most outsider artists managed to gather a following some way or the other. It isn’t just happenstance.
Don't caring about audience doesn't mean not having an audience. But, caring about an audience, by definition means creating derivative commercial works of low value. It works in business, but not in art (unless your goal is to just make money and/or be famous).
For the longest time, caring about your audience was the only way to get food on the table for an artist.
Michelangelo and Carravagio were contract artists and so were most of the others who are considered great artists.
Of course, their audience wasn't the plebs.
And what is considered true art today is nothing but a rigged money game of the big art houses and galleries.