In modern music, "audio production" is arguably more important than any other aspect. If we judged your average top 10 hit by the same standards (melody, harmonization) that we did a Bach piece, no modern music would be considered "good" (le wrong generation, I get it). But these songs are popular and drive a multimillion dollar industry, so they must be doing something right. I would point straight to production quality and technique. Why is Dr. Dre so popular? He's a decent rapper but he doesn't really have much content volume. He's who he is because he's one of the best producers in hip-hop. He made a career, a legacy, and an industry out of just being really good at production.
As an aside, I would argue that writing hooks is actually much more important than audio production. Music snobs like to talk about how simple the melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions are in pop music, but writing incredible hooks is hardly a solved problem and is something I am extremely impressed by.
So absolutely true. It's refreshing to hear someone discuss this in the same terms I do, as almost everyone I talk to about how production has become the music and how Ableton or ProTools is the instrument looks at me like I'm nuts.
