I get to see both sides of the loudness wars in my profession. While there's slowly been a shift away from the super distorted and overly-compressed sound that most people think of when they say "loudness wars", there's still plenty of artists that want it that loud. Even if it knowingly messes with the integrity of their song. The number of times I have artists choose a heavily distorted master that's super flat sounding compared a slightly less compressed master, shudder...
It's a rough generalization, but mostly it seems to be the bass music types after this sort of sound still, they want it loud as fuck no matter what. Oh well, it's their music.
And I 100% think DJs are responsible in some part of the loudness wars continuing. Most artists I know who want it super loud do so because they don't want DJs flipping through tracks on Beatport to get to theirs and skip it becuase it's quieter then the rest they are previewing. Is it right? No, but it happens all the time.
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