Nope, not at all; I see them (major record labels & distributors) continuing to push for proprietary file types and digital snakeoil (upsampling).

The quest for having the best-sounding albums is non-existent (simply because that would cost more and take more time to accomplish).

>We have been at the point where actual mixing and mastering tracks is the bottleneck

Thank you. This is what I came here to say.

I’ve been Mastering Audio for over 20 years and I’m honestly quite a bit disheartened by how poor the quality of current releases are today - and it’s only gotten worse.

In the last 20 years, I have seen a lot of seasoned Mastering Engineers leave the business. It is rare to see people sending out their albums to get mastered by a professional who only does Mastering; these days (in most popular genres) it’s quite typical for a release to be recorded/mixed/mastered by the same engineer and the results are typically underwhelming.

The current economic situation hasn’t helped either. Most pros who are still around today have had to raise their rates, and this has lead some to use “online mastering” (AI) for their tracks. A lot of times, the results are passable, but it’s not nearly the same thing as when you’re working with a human who might give you some feedback on things to tweak on your mixes, helping you to get the most out of a mix prior to mastering.