[jrace]

Whats the benefit? --With todays bandwidth and storage prices, do we really need to compress audio for delivery over the net?

[tasty_freeze]

If you are on a cell phone or a cellular hot spot, data caps are still a thing. I pay $10/GB for my hotspot bandwidth ($5/GB when it is on sale).

40 minutes of streaming music at 4 Mbps is 1.2GB, so up to $12 for me.

[mark-r]

Comcast has a cap on my cable modem. I keep my music files local so I don't need to pull them from the internet.

[CameronNemo]

SoundCloud is barely scraping by on some low bitrate streams.

Maybe the user can afford it, but the streaming company has margins to keep.