Counterpoint: bandcamp is doing well. Vinyl sales are doing well.

If I like an artist that I find on streaming, I buy an LP and get a lossless download for free. I still have a music library and I will never rent my favorite music.

Artists prefer to connect directly with their fans and BC is probably the best platform for people who care to pay and support acts directly. They have high res downloads and I import them.

I don't think the hate is about people who know it doesn't actually sound different if the audio file is 16 bit or 24 bit or necessarily about receiving a few more bytes than they need, it's about the pushes by these types of streaming services/offerings or people insisting that it's supposed to be any better for listening when it's not.

Also the playback rate and the file rate are different topics. The former can get into scenarios more like the audio processing section of the article e.g. I had this one shitty headset for work which required me to set the volume to 1-2 (out of 100) on the computer and I could actually blind test tell when it was in 16 bit or 24 bit mode because it was cutting and boosting it so much it effectively lost precision in 16 bit mode.