Many people that grew up with music that was allowed more of a dynamic range much prefer it, which is understandable – there is something to be said for its ability to deliver impact and its room to grow.  However, I don’t believe that music without that kind of range/ability is necessarily worse.  More than anything, it’s just different: a product of changes within society, production, consumption, and tastes.  People that are more used to music that is less compressed may simply prefer it because it’s what they’re used to, and not because it genuinely sounds better.  A common argument is that heavily compressed music can’t deliver the same kind of emotional punch as music with more of a range, but from the standpoint of someone who has primarily experienced “louder” music my whole life, I don’t think this is true.  If music is allowed to grow and get louder to accentuate a certain part, it does lend it a specific intensity.  However, there are other ways to achieve the same thing, which many modern songs make use of.  The addition of harmonies, a fuller background sound, a beat drop, even the use of time changes or unusual patterns within the structure of the song can be enough to get the same emotional response.  To me, compressed songs have never felt flat.  I do agree that it is generally better to allow for at least a little room to grow or to be louder for impact, but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary.  It might be because that’s what I grew up hearing, but there isn’t a huge difference for me, and I don’t think that heavily compressed music is in any way a degradation of culture.  It’s just… different.  It makes use of different tools to achieve similar effects, or in some cases, doesn’t even need to achieve the same things.  Compressed music, from what I’ve heard, generally has a fuller and more balanced sound from the beginning, so does it even need that same impact?

As far as compressed music signalling that people are becoming lazier or not listening to music the way that they should, I will admit that as a realist I’m a little biased.  Generally, I consider myself to be a nihilist, so idealist standpoints tend to make me angry.  The way that I see things, nothing really matters because nothing is truly permanent or worth being exalted as an ideal, so I tend to see idealist themes as nothing more than excuses to promote elitism and cut people out of things that they might enjoy.  Any form of art, including music, should be fully and completely available to everyone.  I don’t believe that there’s any true ideal, and as such, people should be allowed to enjoy things in peace however they personally deem fit as long as they aren’t harming anyone else.  If someone is listening to music while doing something else, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t paying enough attention to the music or not giving it the respect that it deserves.  I think that it’s partially a product of changing times and the way that people now interact with the world as well – everything is coming at us so fast that the only way to keep up is to multitask or risk missing something.  So we’ve learned to give certain things priority while still paying attention to multiple things at once.  There’s something to be said for being able to listen to music without having to focus on it – it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m lazy, I’m still hearing it and probably jamming a little while I do whatever else I’m doing, but it’s not my primary focus.  It’s still very important.  If I can’t listen to music during a time that I normally would, like when I’m at the gym or in the car, I feel that absence like I’m missing an arm.  I’ve adapted to listen to it in a way that works for me while still appreciating it, and compressed music tends to fit the way I do things.  In this day and age, I think it’s genuinely unreasonable to expect people to dedicate time to one task and one task only at a time.  It’s unrealistic, even if that might be a little sad.  The best that we can do is adapt to it and enjoy things in new ways and in new forms.  I don’t believe that compressed music is a degradation, but rather an evolution.  And if you don’t agree, the great thing about music is that it doesn’t disappear – there will always be room for dynamic range in other songs anyway.