The problem is the average listener just doesn't care or know any better. They might say they do... but for example how many people can really tell the difference between a lossy mp3 and a full quality wave file? I spent years studying it and I struggle a lot of the time.

As for mastering the cost of a decent mastering engineer and a good mastering studio is still quite high so you'd need a really decent size of market to buy in to bother mastering twice, the chances are it's not financially worth it. Of course you could just master once with greater dynamic range but then "it doesn't sound like it does on radio". And the industry still considers radio the biggest advertising tool for music really.

Of course, if you get into the right kind of music a lot of indie releases do play for the artistic vibe but you're unlikely to get it from a major, or a large indie, so you might have to really dig to find some of those acts.

I want to make another point though cos a few posts here seem confused: Audio compression does not equal small files. Audio compression just makes the peaks and troughs of volume closer together. File compression makes small files, and that's something completely different - then we get into the realms of lossy and lossless compression and audio quality rather than dynamic range.