Your post led me down the rabbit hole of over-compression, not for the first time, and I ended up at this video which gave a very succinct answer to my question

Your post led me down the rabbit hole of over-compression, not for the first time, and I ended up at this video which gave a very succinct answer to my question of: "Okay, I realize that music is getting compressed, but what are we losing?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ Via a nice article with analysis: https://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/ https://musicmachinery.com/2009/03/23/the-loudness-war/