No one’s going to be converting their music library to old-fashioned low bitrate MP3s, whereas vinyl is more popular than ever. (Okay, maybe not ever, but it’s actually growing again.)
let's not confuse "the only format available at the time" with popular by choice. each time a new format was created, it was adopted to the point of vinyl nearly becoming obsolete. what is old is new again is part of vinyl's resurrection. it's doubtful most hipsters buying vinyl today even have sound systems other than bookshelf speakers to hear a difference in any format.
My point was that vinyl, as well as being (1) pleasingly retro and (2) physical rather than existing in the cloud somewhere, also has (3) fundamentally desirable traits as an audio format — ‘analogue warmth’, etc. Bad lossy digital compression has (1) but not (2) or (3).
You’re right about vinyl’s current popularity not having much to do with that though: it’s mainly (1) and (2) I think.
That said, assuming a pilot signal was added one could probably put two to three hours of PAL-frequency analog audio (which completely went away with digital sound) onto a CD.
Most other usable plugins in that realm cost real money (Lossy is USD 79 for example) so I like to take the liberty to highlight the donation link:
Did want to point out some other cheap/free bitcrushers out there for people to try (in addition to MAIM)
https://www.deniseaudio.com/plugins/my-crush is currently free with newsletter sub and was super cheap when I first purchased it.
Some other free vst of note https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2012/03/09/bpb-freeware-stu...
I also like https://camelcrusher.com/
"The infinitely desirable sound of crappy mp3’s, broken cellphones, streaming videos, and much more."
I think Lossy approaches the same idea from a more artistic angle in contrast to MAIM which comes to a similar end from a more technical direction.
Coming from the 8-bit generation I find it interesting and refreshing that the younger generation seems to leave the harsh sound of the bit crusher behind and brings more sophistication into digital degradation. It's no surprise, of course, because low quality lossy compression is what they grew up with, in contrast to 4-bit 4 kHz bit banged crash, my generation would consider lo-fi.
Another plugin that is similar in spirit in the sense that it goes beyond simple downsampling to make things retro is AudioThing's Speakers. It has convolution samples from many old devices like the Gameboy or several old phones. I think it would be the perfect companion to listen to MP3 degraded sound with a speaker from your past.
[1] https://goodhertz.com/lossy/
[2] https://www.audiothing.net/effects/speakers/
I'm not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned. These are just plugins from my collection that came to my mind. Usually I do not post links to paid products at all, but I also think the VST plugin space is somewhat special in that it seems to allow many small companies to exist (maybe even prosper?), which is rare today, so I made an exception here.