The OP video's point about timbre has me thinking a lot. Production quality and marketability are easy things to address. It is money, get over it.
However, the complexity of the music, and the ability to make out subtle nuances is a stylistic choice combined with a listening preference. Which means we have the most control over it, but is it a forgone conclusion?
I have a pretty broad knowledge base of music and history of it, as well as my person preferences. The arc of music seems to head towards increasingly greater extremes. In all of its various modes, Classical music carries with it a certain vibe of quaintness that never gets its hands too dirty with really raw emotions. Because the culture that created it was restrained and highly organized, the music reflects that. Classical's joy, longing, and anger is of a very socially acceptable type.
Less artistically refined folk music (or indigenous music, world music, whatever) is a little more visceral, but is still limited by the constraints of what people had handy. The defining characteristics are rustic instruments and rustic ideas told through the music. If you don't have a connection to the culture or the instruments of a "folk" then it is harder to form an emotional connection to the music.
From a position of a person that is listening to new music being produced and released today, many other musical style seem "stuck" even though it may be more complex, well performed, and artistic. Jazz has an emotion and vibe it can't shake; it is what it is. Country is the same way for me. When I listen to something from the supposed "golden age" of timbre in rock music, I hear the complexity, I hear the effort, I hear the clear production, and am still unmoved by it. My mother was a big Doobie Brothers fan (more a Michael McDonald fan really), so I grew up listening to them. Based on familiarity, I like it because it of my memories of my mother listening to something like What a Fool Believes. From an analytical POV, I seen what the OP video is talking about on many levels. All that said, beyond a moment of nostalgia, it does nothing for me. It is light and quaint. It is musically complex, but emotionally simple. (To me.)
Now let's fast forward a little to modern listeners and modern music. I'm not a pop listener at all, but I hear it because of my wife. My kids think real instruments sound old, just as I feel that keyboards (especially Moogs or Rhoades) sound old, or orchestral instruments sound old to a lot of people. They want something of their time, and in their time, things are electronic and synthetic. I find myself addicted to the sound of heavy, down tuned, distorted guitars, blistering drumming, and vocals that sound like they are about to take your head off. Why? I don't know. It isn't something I've been conditioned to like because it has zero popular exposure. Is there something in the production that has its hooks in me, like the addictive nature of sugar, fat, or salt? Maybe. Whatever it is, what I do noticed is that these more aggressive arrangement leave no room for subtly or a million instruments. Five are taking up the entire mix. I can't say if it is good or bad. Maybe I'm a case study for music that works on people in a purposeful way. Or perhaps it is merely an emotional connection, and the connections people want from their music changes with their culture.
Does culture drive music, or does music drive culture. Is "terrible" pop a result of profits and laziness, or is it a reflection of the times we live in? Is it maybe not the music that is terrible, but the culture that makes and consumes it?
