> For example in 2007, making good sounding music required at least a studio. If you wanted to record 4 microphones at the same time, you needed expensive hardware. Doing any kind of music editing required a huge machine and expensive software with expensive plugins.

A lot of people point to Garageband (released 2004) as having a big democratizing effect on digital audio production. I think v2 in 2005 supported recording 8 tracks simultaneously. Not an especially sophisticated tool (and arguably responsible for the built-in loops being heard in way too many popular songs), but a big change at a time when the alternative might have been a computer with ProTools and dedicated PCI cards.

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/apple-garageband-m...

What you said was true about 2001. I'm not so sure about 2007 though. For $1000 you could have bought 4 decent condenser microphones and an audio interface for them. And for another $1000 a medium-high computer.

Arguably not that expensive, considering that you probably already had a computer and you could split the audio hardware costs between the 4 band members (otherwise why 4 microphones)

Software and plugins were indeed expensive, but there were plenty of free alternatives of decent quality. Reaper, FruityLoops were pretty cheap and quite good for the basics.

tbh, in 2007 you had blog house and other borderline lo-fi electronic genres. before that you had 8-track 909-loop house music. It doesn't _necessarily_ require a studio, though I can't argue it helps.