To summarize.
A. The achronim clearly prohibit listening to musical instruments.
B. All major poskim extend that to recorded music, because it has the same/close enough Simcha effect as listening to live music. (Whaddaya think the achronim were only talking about major concerts?)
C. Many poskim include any recorded music, even without accompanying instruments, in this. There is a מקור חיים that explicitly includes live music without instruments, and the above poskim contend that recorded music is even worse.
D. Accoppela music which attempts to mimic the effects of accompanying musical instruments, wasn't a thing until fairly recently, so we don't have much DPs on it. Obviously the poskim in C would prohibit, but that isn't necessarily standard.
So we turn to some logic, if B was assumed prohibited because it mimicked the effects of live music, it reasons this should be the same.
This whole prohibition isn't the same as the year round issur which is much more מעיקר הדין, there these distinctions hold more weight. However here the point is we avoid excessive simcha. So the difference arguably isn't enough.
Now I'm not saying this is going to be universal and unanimously held. In my humble opinion it’s sort of an appropriate attitude thing. But to claim it's "just looking for chumros", is completely absurd. Especialy since that claim was based on a lack of knowledge of points A and B.
I await a retraction on that claim.
