Sorry, but the public's standards are moving in the opposite direction.
Look at the quality of your average stereo in the 70's and 80's versus now - more and more people are using $100 iPod docks as their primary stereos, or computer speakers, or worse. People aren't willing to pay for quality and it isn't likely to happen.
If it ever does happen it'll be Apple that's able to pull it off, selling ALAC on the iTunes store.
But people aren't going to be willing to sacrifice the 1GB+ of space on their mp3 player that a losslessly compressed hi-res album would take up.
Look at the quality of your average stereo in the 70's and 80's versus now - more and more people are using $100 iPod docks as their primary stereos, or computer speakers, or worse. People aren't willing to pay for quality and it isn't likely to happen.
If it ever does happen it'll be Apple that's able to pull it off, selling ALAC on the iTunes store.
But people aren't going to be willing to sacrifice the 1GB+ of space on their mp3 player that a losslessly compressed hi-res album would take up.