Why convert MP4 to MP3?
MP4 is the most common video format: Android phones, cameras, screen recorders and video sent through messaging apps all use it. When only the sound matters — a song, a lecture, an interview, a podcast recorded on video — an MP3 is ten to twenty times lighter, plays in the background on any phone, and works in car radios and players that don't read video.
What happens to the audio inside an MP4
An MP4 is a container: it holds a video track (usually H.264 or H.265) and an audio track (usually AAC). The converter reads that audio track and re-encodes it to MP3 with the LAME encoder. The video is simply ignored, which is why the conversion takes a few seconds even for a long video.
Other formats from the same MP4
The same page also produces M4A (AAC, ideal for Apple devices), WAV (lossless, for editing software) and OGG (open, compact). And it accepts MOV, MKV, WebM and AVI as well as MP4.