Cage's goal for th33e piece in a direct way. So this is why 4:33 is conceptual: the value of the piece exists solely in the concept because the concept is so self-conscious that it prevents a direct, immediate experience (an aesthetic experience). It has an aesthetic goal, but the aesthetic is only achieved through apprehension of the concept, not through direct experience. The aesthetic is the idea, as I think you alluded to at some point.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I have always wondered where Art resides... in the subject, the object, in both or perhaps in their relationship. Maybe this is the wrong question and 'art' is not something stored on a CD or hung on the wall, but rather, similar to reading a book, it's an active experience that we enter into with our imagination. We suspend reality and we become 'absorbed in' a reality created by an author.
Performances act out what the artist has conceived to enable an audience's imagination to understand the work and to hopefully to become 'absorbed in' it. It is a system similar to a language system where meanings are developed within the system. In conceptual art like 4' 33 the artist has set the stage, has established the context which is social, and has put in place a formal methodology from which its performance can become meaningful. The sounds are as you said
... meditative; instead of focusing on musical notes, you focus on ambient sounds around you; the audience rustling, a leaky drainpipe, your own heartbeat
These sounds are 'natural', they are ego-less, simple ambient sounds, which are not ordered nor exactly chaotic since their aspect is limited by the stage, by its social context, by our own physicality. Cage wants the audience to meditate using these natural ambient sounds to be enable it to become present to its own awareness, a kind of purposeless purpose or unfocused focus. I think meaning in Cage's system is achieved by the experience of a clarity, similar to the affect of meditation, but here the clarity relates the experience of sounds in silence.
His record label must hold the copyright. Frank Zappa did a cover of it and paid royalties, and Classical Graffiti, did a cover, called it 'A One Minute Silence' but they did not pay to use it and they were sued by the record label. The Classical Graffiti said that you can't copyright silence but parties settled out of court, and the settlement was rumored at $100,000.