> Uncompressed audio is radically different and richer than low fi digital compression, but almost everything we hear everywhere is coming through streaming services.
Out of curiosity, have you blind A/B tested yourself with the various streaming service "high" quality MP3 encodings vs. lossless? (like https://abx.digitalfeed.net/) I agree that there is some difference that you can hear in certain parts of songs listening on high-end equipment/headphones (stuff that is greater quality than >99.9% of the listening population has), but really to me it would be hard to call it radically different. Obviously if you are below 320 MP3s there are more noticeable compromises that do ruin things one you notice.
You are probably right, but I take OP as metaphorically speaking.
Recently I went to a local orchestra performance, and I was absolutely blown away by the sound. It was overwhelming in a way spotify never is. It was like a full body experience. I’ve been to the orchestra before, but it’s been a few years and I just forgot how powerful music can be.
Kinda like how most people listen to low quality audio streams, on low quality earbuds/soundbars. Hell, I torrented a video recently because it wasn’t available to buy, and again, was blown away because the quality was so high compared to the streaming I pay for. I think in general, we’re all just becoming used to the mediocre.
Well, it's important to differentiate what actually matters in cases like this otherwise we just get into a weird luddite place of complaining about things that don't actually matter.
Here it is the listening medium and environment where an orchestra hall is a physical building built at a cost many orders of magnitude more expensive than speakers specifically for the experience of listening to live music compared to listening to something on a home speaker or phone.
To me It's interesting that you assume Spotify is the problem, whereas its actually the listening medium you are using Spotify through. In the case of audio, you could listen to Spotify recordings on sound systems that will basically blow you away in the same way a live orchestra will, but they cost probably 10's of thousands of dollars. For example at the higher-end of setups people describe it being hard to differentiate between concert recordings and actual concerts, and this should be expected with what we know about audio.
I do agree though that quality degradation as a means of meeting cost and false-repackaging of that as higher quality is annoying. Especially in streaming video, things are advertised as 4K, but that ignores bitrate and we have the potential infrastructure to deliver experiences that are way better like streaming the equivalent bitrate of a Bluray, but we've kind of fallen into a place of "good enough" where most people don't know or appreciate what is possible. Audio is kind of similar, but there is maybe more of an argument that cost of listening systems means we're at a happy-medium of cost vs. quality and you can pretty much buy the level of experience you want there.
One really, really critical piece of this: our ability to discern quality is predominated by how much quality we've had the opportunity to discern in our lifetimes.
Jeff has eaten at ten thousand restaurants around the world in his lifetime. Nick drinks Soylent for 80% of his calories; the other 20% often comes from McDonalds or Chipotle. They've both eaten at this Bistro you are considering getting dinner at; after asking for their opinion, would you assign more weight to Jeff's or Nick's?
Its true that 99% of the population cannot discern the difference between lossless and ~320kbps lossy audio encoding. Is that truly a "natural" phenomena? Or is it learned through existence in an inevitable world where high quality music and high-quality listening devices aren't available to most people? What impacts does this have as that drop in quality feeds upstream: when producers and musicians make music with Airpods because that's what they grew up with, and its what most of their audience uses?
Music is a less interesting domain of this discussion because, really, most platforms do lossless now. Spotify is adding it soon. Its basically the default on Apple Music and Tidal. AM has genuine multi-channel Dolby Atmos. Extremely high quality music consumption has never been easier or more accessible (well, a 3.5mm jack would be nice, but that's a sailed ship).
IMO: Video is a far, far more tragic loss. Netflix charges more for access to 4K content; but you'd be a fool to pay it, because as many who have streamed both would attest, "4K isn't worth it you can barely tell the difference between 1080p". If you played these same people a Bluray of that release, their minds would be blown. Near-100% of people can discern the difference, and would prefer the Bluray; but Netflix will not stream that quality, because its an order of magnitude more bandwidth usage. What's more: Many recent productions are simply never available in this highest-quality format. Because 99% of content is consumed via Compressed Stream: TV panel quality at the same price point has stagnated or even dropped over the past five years. I hope you'll believe that some major productions may soon have a conversation like "Why do we need these five figure dollar 16k cameras, this is just going to stream on netflix, just grab a basic Sony DSLR from B&H and let's save some money."
How many people would even pay for blu-rays, or blu-ray quality streaming for the average Netflix show?
Probably not even enough to cover the costs of overhead and distribution… this isn’t ‘enshitification’, just revealed preferences of the average Netflix consumer.
The more quality focused streaming consumers use Apple TV or iTunes anyways.
Out of curiosity, have you blind A/B tested yourself with the various streaming service "high" quality MP3 encodings vs. lossless? (like https://abx.digitalfeed.net/) I agree that there is some difference that you can hear in certain parts of songs listening on high-end equipment/headphones (stuff that is greater quality than >99.9% of the listening population has), but really to me it would be hard to call it radically different. Obviously if you are below 320 MP3s there are more noticeable compromises that do ruin things one you notice.