Over compression is horrible, but unrelated to this.

I grew up with cassettes, but was happy to switch to CDs when I was around 18. The better the recording and playback, the closer it is to what the artist intended, and to how it would sound if the artist was playing right in front of you (if they don't use autotune or compression).

It's a fact that people get accustomed to the distortions in music playback, in the old days it was the noise of vinyl, which got better later, then cassettes, then heavily compressed MP3s. People should aim for the best possible audio quality and get rid of their preference for distortion.