Regarding 3 Jackson Browne albums in 96/24,

"this album recently was removed from HDTracks because
the licensing contract had to be renewed, and Warner wanted a higher fee..."

I suspect there's others also.

And an already anaemic selection gets even smaller.

The major labels can be so penny-wise (or copyright-wise) and pound-foolish. They try to kill a new hi-rez market aborning because they want a couple more dollars per album, then they end up making no profits off the stuff at all. They try to have promotional videos removed from YouTube in order to guard copyrights, then their artists don't earn the labels any money because no one knows they exist since they can't see the promos. Good grief.

It's clear that the majors still haven't figured out what to do with anything CD quality or greater. With crappy sounding MP3s, they weren't so worried about distribution of the material. Once it's lossless though, it's a whole different matter. I'm betting they're still somehow holding out hope that someone creates a model for lossless that involves some form of DRM. If they can't pull off DRM, they at least want to squeeze every penny out of Hi-Rez.

I hate to sound cynical in asking this, but has there ever been a truly popular high-end format? I'm too young to remember first-hand formats such as 7 1/2 IPS open-reel tapes, or quadrophonic sound--but that's just it: price and convenience have apparently remained the primary concerns of music consumers (in my lifetime, anyway).

In the USA, High End has always been a niche market; unless one wishes to consider the change from 78's to 33's. I happen to believe this is partially (but not completely) due to marketing decisions. "HD TV" & Digital TV certainly took off when it was all but forced on us.