The strangest part is, the compression has absolutely zero benefit. From the listening experience, to the production process, to the business aspects of making music, it has no redeeming qualities.
WHAT? As if anyone on the planet would go over to the changer, eject this allegedly offending CD, look at the label, and then declare, "Welp, I'm never buying another album put out on Arista records!"
The utter stupidity of it is mind-boggling.
And add to that the fact that, if people wanted compression so much, it could be done by THE PLAYER. In fact, this used to be done. My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.
I believe _this_ is where the issue mostly originated (well, radio, really). Radio is already massively compressed, and many people were either listening to things in the car, on some tiny little radio in the kitchen, or with awful cheap headphones with their walkman's built-in radio.
All of these weren't great environments to start with, and the dynamic range of radio was tiny given the overall bandwidth available to most FM stations.
So, companies compress, people get used to it, and thus the horror continues.
But of course it wasn't, and before long I realized that I liked the sound of the records better.