n+1. #indiedev is full of extremely passionate people who want it exactly their way down to the pixel and every note of music. To write off the entire non-AAA space as only wanting to write shovelware even as a first game is laughable.
Having worked on a few games doing music, the devs were super passionate about a quality product, frequently over-engineering, and when then-available bog-standard audio middleware didn't do the procedural mixing we wanted, wrote a custom system just to get it spot-on.
I also know a few major AAA legends who went indie who won't publish shite.
Equally, if the original commenter is happy with x being good enough then that's valid. Maybe the game isn't for you?
Keep in mind my initial reply was directly replying to the "What happens if you've built the next hollow knight" in your post. The implication of my first reply is if you're at such a level you can do that, you very likely aren't going to settle for your music letting you down, which is arguably the other 50% of what a modern game is against the visuals. You're focusing on the commenter being satisfied by AI music. If the game is that good, you'll get a budget to have the music not suck, whether that's via XGP paying to finish the development, a revshare with a composer, a grant, or even a publisher.
The tl;dr is if buddy thinks his game is anything more than a learning exercise or something he simply enjoyed making and has potential to actually be a great piece of art or a decently selling product, he absolutely does not have to settle for mediocrity even without a budget.