I was sharing music with a friend and their reaction upon being shown an artist (not even listening) was "ew less than 100k monthly listens”

bro? is this your metric for good music ? how many people listen to it on Spotify ?

if this is how avg ppl see music it explains a lot about top 40 charts

You could make an argument that if a song is listened a lot, it means a lot of people find it good and thus is could not be bad. But then again, Suicide Squad was a successful movie if you were to base your judgement on popularity.