I figured it might make a difference to someone to edit my down-thread comment a bit. I'm trying to make a point here.

...As long as there's a demand for QUALITY over any intensive examination of the content, there'll be "improvements" engineered as solutions. It's not unjustifiable, it's simply that it's seldom necessary those improvements even exist, given that the relative amount of high-quality content doesn't improve quantitatively, especially content that CAN'T be distributed without those improvements.

I know, I know, I'm trying to quantify to some degree what most would insist is unquantifiable, I'd insist it's not (with quite a bit of empirical support I'm not going to burden a comment with), but most people's understanding of what is quantifiable is very crude and/or ignorant.

Truly great music, great visual art, etc. will ALWAYS be made, the overwhelming sea of what is NOT pounding true quality through the noise floor is the impediment.

The drive to create will over-ride the lack of outlets and distribution chains; it's those outlets and chains that make the difference in mass awareness and (likely) return to the creator, at least in recognition.

Arguably, we might be able to generate the kind of mass culture we have without high-speed protocols using different network architectures (they've been around since the 1940s with the advent of digital computing).
I'd contend is the conscious decision to buy quality seldom enters into the FOMO and status-seeking that drives nearly all of the market. Designers and manufactures know this, they've learned to count on it since the advent of mass advertising.