I've been sharing music on SoundCloud for a decade and I am genuinely interested in this topic, but I cannot stand how strongly this post reeks of LLM writing. Do people releasing this kind of content not notice all the clichés?

Worse than that is the fact that the article completely ignores how SoundCloud now is prioritizing the ears of older listeners.

They don't care. They think the point is quantity and they don't even know what the word "quality" means.

They know what quality means, but it takes effort and while the majority let them get away with “meh, it'll do” or worse they'll not need to make that effort.

Heck, they probably don't care if the majority look in, see the slop, and nope out after a couple of paragraphs or less. By that time the ad impressions have been counted. That is what it is really about, not quantity (well, not directly, though that is the least effort route to more impressions) nor quality. Ad-tech is the target audience.

alt title: Less Is More: Why SoundCloud Low-passes its AAC Transcodings