I remember buying tons of blank TDK and Maxell cassettes back in the 70’s and 80’s and recording stuff off of the radio onto them or whole albums onto them for later playback in the car. Cassettes always sounded rather crappy with their wow and flutter, hiss levels and limited dynamic range but they were good enough to listen to and more importantly, if you ended up liking the tape, the cassette version served as a type of try before you buy advertisement where if you liked it you could then buy the Vinyl album. And that worked and sold a lot of albums. So whats up today? The crappy sounding digital MP3’s of today, crappier sounding than cassette tapes of yore in some ways, should still be free to copy and trade around because, like cassettes, they are decreased quality advertisements that suggest to the listener to get the actual full quality CD if they like what they heard in the mp3. I can’t stand listening to mp3’s in general due to their distortion but if I hear one that I like I will find and buy the full quality, non crushed CD and listen to it.
Crappy sounding digital MP3s? You must be downloading music files from YouTube or some such place. Even there, crystal clear remastered tracks can be found.