Why Does All Music Sound the Same; An Explanation

Streaming is why high compression will die out. No advantage to it, streaming services are set so every track seems equally loud so if they are overly compressed when recorded when they are passed through streaming services the loudness advantage is gone and they sound distorted. Probably why a lot of streamed music sounds lousy to me except for older recordings.

djones51, I hope that will be true but according to what I've read, radio stations have been doing this for years and most people who listen to Apple Music probably have Sound Check on and don't even know it.

This has not slowed down the loudness wars as far as I can tell.

And that is what seems so peculiar. SQ is being lost for the sake of loudness despite the fact that the loudness is not accomplishing the purpose that it once had. In effect engineers are making an effort to do something that has no benefit _and_ sounds bad. 

So one wonders why it is still such an issue.

lowrider57 said:

"The lows are pushed up and and the highs are limited by not allowing any peaks, they are all at the same level.
The result is no range in the bass, no range in the highs. All instruments lose their separation including vocals and all are at the same level, which means the same volume when played."

After doing a lot of reading on this topic this afternoon I think the statement above really simplifies and clarifies how to look at this complex topic.

The long term use of hypercompression in the mastering studio has finally killed pop music. Not only does it suck out all the dynamic range out of the music, in so doing it scrubs all emotional content as well.

Devices such as the following are also partially to blame:

Mastering Clipper, Loudness Meter, Multiband Saturator. This device makes the recording as "loud" as possible and strips the music of anything worth listening to.