I had to look up the hack people used to do back in the day to have their cheap sennheiser basically become a model that's $100 more (https://hackaday.com/2011/02/12/uncrippling-lower-model-spea...). That was 10 years ago! So yeah, this trend is going to stay for a while.
Punching holes in 3.5" floppies to turn 720kb double density into 1.44mb high density will remain my favorite removable media hack. Saved me so much money as a kid.