Sadly they could have been a major player in the standardisation of metadata or at least even conformed to one of the current (imperfect) standards that exist. Their priorities lay elsewhere I guess.
Agreed, it's also not what an artist gets paid, it's extremely hard (read impossible) to get a direct relationship with Spotify. You require distribution.. that alone takes anything from a flat delivery fee per album per year (the worst prey on independent artists who will rarely ever recoup that per release from spotify, apple and Amazon combined) to 25% of that revenue and a dozen or so other business models inbetween, then if they have a label, the label gets 50%, publisher is taking 25% of the mechanicals or worse you aren't registered at a PRO and that money gets left on the table. Those ~£0.005 per stream (US, UK rates) aren't looking great for most people but that's the reality of what your getting.
So after you've pumped out 6 singles a year, spent £100 a pop promoting those said singles, £50 mastering each single.. how much do these people think 98% of artists are making these days and can be sure of what they may take home every 2 months from these singles. At least with an LP you have a fixed cost and a revenue projection that can be worked out by price per copy.
I don't find it large compared to other uses of electricity that waste large amounts, or other forms of pollution that don't provide any use to the world.
If you find it useless then sure vilify it, but not everyone feels that the creation of an entire industry that has allowed certain people financial freedom is a drain. I feel there are much bigger fish to aim an ecological spear at.
(updated the previous comment to show production not consumption btw)
No one ever mentions the insane amount of time it takes to sync their chain.. I'd say that is a big stopping point for a lot of people.. I've been trying for weeks to catch up. (Where other wallets sync in a reasonable time)
London hasn't fallen in population since the 90s in fact it's been a steady rise since then(0). These are just the official stats, anecdotally there is noticeably a lot more people in London than when I was a teenager.
You can do it online.. no need to spend anything. Why not do that and stop the tree wasting yourself, as they aren't going to. You only need do it every 2 years or so.
A CD is limited to 22khz, whereas vinyl is analogue and doesn't have this limit, digital files obviously can go up to ~96khz due to the 192khz sample rate achievable by some sound cards.
This is something I have battled with for a long time, personally I master to make the music sound good, sometimes that is loud (new dance music) sometimes not so much (old African recordings remasters).
Coupled with the data from this page [1] there is no point in going too loud anyways, that's why you have gain / volume control. I'm not sure how I feel about streaming services implementing extra processing tbh. Spotify is the worst culprit adding limiting which can significantly change the sound of a recording.
I just wish other engineers would have more pragmatism in this industry, way too much overcooked and distorted music around.