The video is more clickbait than substance.

That said, the loudness war is well documented.

In general, we tend to like what's louder, and that's what drives much of this.

I recently heard that one of the sneaky tricks of a many of VSTs is that - in addition to adding the effects "on the tin" - they also slightly increase the volume so we hear the result as "better".

If you like that modern sound, iZotope Elements is on sale for $29 until 8/14.

If you don't like that overly compressed sound, there's no need to master it that way. But if your song ever gets wide radio play (as if people still listened to the radio wink ), the station will automatically apply compression to the song anyway.

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?