Did anyone see the Rolling Stone article?

This goes back to an old post I made where I thought that there is TOO MUCH music (noise) all the time wherever you go - supermarket, restaurant, gas station, everywhere - and all very poor quality. No silence or just the sound of life. It's crappy music blaring at everyone from every direction, all the time. So, then what value is there to music? To most people it is just background noise, they have never heard anything better and want this noise as cheaply as possible, to I guess drown out the sounds of life. Buy what you can now, it's only going to get worse. But one can hope I guess.

Maybe the real question is if anything in Rolling Stone has any real validity. I don't know an adult over 40 that even reads that rag. And I rarely see it on news stands. Sure there are always doomsayers yapping about how CDs and the music industry are dying. But how many of them really know anything?
And if the music business is so bad, why are major act concerts bringing in big dollars everywhere. We were just at a sold out Billy Joel concert three weeks ago - and the cheap tickets started at $65.00.

As far as mastering music for crappy playback systems goes, that's been happening since at least the 70's. I remember seeing a rare glimpse of the goings on in a recording studio during a Hall & Oates(?) session. The producer was doing a mixdown using these pathetic little speakers. He said he did this because the big speakers made everything sound good. Uh huh.