If a recording was commercially available on physical media, it's usually possible to get hold of it. Thankfully many 'record collectors' have appalling taste/deep insecurities that require them to follow the herd, so they leave the good stuff for people actually interested in music. There's nothing out there I'm pining for and I can live with the odd scratch.
Well, I have bought many used LPs, and know that it is not a simple task. And although I can accept pops and clicks, I can not withstand the periodic noise of a scratch!
As for the idea that we should accept the recording industry's push to consider music a service that they can sell us many times over and that we never own - no I will never accept that and I pity the kids coming along who will never know the pleasure of tracking down and owning the physical object, reading the sleeve notes about venues, methods or historical context, tracking down what composers or performers did next or previously. I have 78s that I can hold and wonder about - and that still sound pretty fresh 90 years on (with the right equipment of course). It's a wonderful connection to a whole musical realm that you simply don't get from tapping on a pad.
Each of us has his habits - I collect the program of most recitals and concerts I go. It is now a full shelve, most probably my sons will send the whole lot to the recycle bin sometime ...
BTW, I also own an working Edison phonograph and an HMV gramophone. From time to time I listen to 2 minutes of 120 years old nostalgia with great pleasure.
As for mastering, there's shedloads of really really bad mastering out there, on vinyl, on CD and on dowload. On download I'd be prepared to bet that a substantial amount of so-called hi-res out there is simply upsampled and of course it's all but impossible to verify the custody chain of a recording - consumers have to take things on trust and in my view a substantial number of them are being taken for mugs quite a lot of the time. (Nothing new in punters being had, but digital would appear to make that easier than in the past).
This fake hi-rez problem was diagnosed and exposed. Everyone can make bets, a few people took it seriously and gave us more confidence. My main interest in high-rez is SACD or original hi-rez recordings, I am safe.
As for streaming services, when I tried out Tidal and Qubuz, there were many occasions when neither even showed the composer of some tracks, let alone much detail about their origins. Such a cavalier attitude to metadata speaks volumes about their commercial priorities. I think I'd rather have some decent information about what I'm listening to than be marketed to on the basis of so-called 'hi-res' or other technical fripperies.
And don't get me started on the abomination that is MQA.
You have a good point here. As you, I love good liner notes, but to be true, since long I use the internet to get extra information on recordings. I used to express the same complain as you concerning the absence of written information on digital music, fortunately Qobuz now includes the pdf booklets of a significant part of the music I like - great to be able to read the Savall splendid texts in zoom mode!
MQA was ten years late. IMHO it was only meaningful when bandwidth was very limited and ADC's were poor.