Nah, I don't think it will ever end. There's always people who want to get as close to the original recording as possible and mp3 with its compression in the higher frequencies won't be enough for them. Sure, they don't take that much space (because compressing the higher frequencies always takes a lot away from the file size) and they're convenient and neat and tidy and all
but ideologically I wouldn't want to use them. On some recordings the cymbals sound wishy-washy etc. Sure, it might sound like a real .wav file to most and one is bound to lose some hearing when getting older anyway. But that's the thing anyway, there's still lots of people who don't care about the differences or don't even hear them.
For me this is a simple thing: "MP3 IS NOT THE ORIGINAL RECORDING! (but if people want to use them for whatever reasons, fine with me)". And of course, since I'm still just trying to get my dirty hands into the FM trading circles I hope the trading won't stop too soon.
There's still things the FM trading community could improve if it wanted to be truly anal retentive; sector boundary errors and incorrect sample offsets in the CDs they burn (common plagues in many a band's trade circles) but I don't mind them myself and I think not fixing them might be better for the traders' mental healths, after having followed some of the discussions on these issues on the Web.
