"Better could be worse" resonates well with what I was thinking reading the article: Ever since punk, and possibly longer, recorded music has a growing number

"Better could be worse" resonates well with what I was thinking reading the article: Ever since punk, and possibly longer, recorded music has a growing number of niches where lack of polish is a feature, not a bug. Liking stuff that others find unlikable makes the consumer feel special. All kinds of guitar noise, the absolute undanceability of IDM, cheesy pop music from an country far away. They all have their qualities, but if you infer from some people enthusiastically defying the superficial shortcomings of those styles that their redeeming qualities must be exceptionally high, you are missing the entire niche identity appeal mechanism: they are liked, in a large part, for being disliked by most others, nothing more. Try to move closer to mainstream (here: add better graphics) and you might alienate your acquired taste connoisseurs long before you start appealing to others.