You need boundaries to focus the mind. Without them, the effort put in greatly diminishes.
Like visual designs, most music gets way too overdesigned. Too much going on without the experience to control the effect. This is a really weird reference, but in the late 1800s to early 1900s, the big trend was to write Church Hymns. There was somewhere in excess of 100k *published* by 1920. Only a couple hundred were good enough to survive into the post-WW2 era. It was this massive media environment that is almost completely lost to time now. We're simply seeing the same thing play out. Every game needs music, so there's too much music to be made. It's very hard to be memorable because all of the genres have defined instruments & soundscapes.
