I cannot imagine that this is true. Even listening to Spotify on a cheap phone using the headphones that came with the phone offers far better sound quality than listening to the nth generation tape copies on the cheap tape players or the bad reception of the tinny radios that we used to have.
This gear usually has very poor mid-range response. Hence, producers crowd tracks in the bottom-end (bass) and treble ranges. Try listening to a track with a cheap $15 earphones and then with a set of studio headphones like ATH-M50x and you'll hear what I mean.
Forget Spotify. People are listening to music on throttled YouTube.
Compression wasn't the antagonist of music. Not even the consumer's general cheapness is the antagonist. The website that pirated it all, and then got bought by a parent company larger than the market value of the entire music industry combined, is the antagonist of music.
I've produced tracks that sound incredible to me on my 6" Yamaha monitors. Then I send them over to friends who listen to them on their tinny laptop speakers and wonder what the big deal is.
Studios deliberately use bad speakers (NS10s, Auratones) to check for this.
In the business it's called "translation" - a good mix sounds good on everything from earbuds to a car stereo to $$$$$$ hifi.
It's almost impossible to make a mix that translates without spending a lot of money on neutral monitors and acoustic treatment.
But there are tricks you can use to make a mix translate better. E.g. You can cut the lowest octave or two in the bass, because no one (outside of a club) can hear it anyway, and use bass sounds with plenty of mids, so you can hear the line even when the low bass isn't there.
Someday I hope to be experienced enough to just know what to do though, without all the extra work. I haven't found a systematic answer yet.