Producers target the global environment of playback systems they expect the work might be listened to on, as best they can.
And this is part of the problem, and one of the stages in the circle of confusion. The final cut of a movie is mastered to look at its best on the standardized monitor it is viewed on, which in turn will look best on cinema screens, projectors and TVs which follow these same standards. Movie producers don't change their color gradings so they'll work better on smartphone screens (despite this becoming a more popular way to consume series and films these days), so neither should music producers compromise their art to sound slightly better out of an inferior speaker such as that on a smartphone. In fact, in recent years, smartphone manufacturers have commendably improved the color accuracy of their displays, moving them closer to the standards the content was mastered with, due to this shift towards mobile viewing. Fix the standards at one end of the production>reproduction chain, and the other end will inevitably have to follow suit. TVs come in a range of sizes, and are viewed in different lighting conditions, with differing side-wall / window reflections noticeable in a dark room, at different viewing distances, by eyes of varying acuity (and some even color blind). Should the film master be adjusted to on average be ok over all these varying conditions? No, it shouldn't, and isn't. And neither should such compromises be made with music reproduction. The average studio is close enough to a well-treated home room for the sound heard in the former to translate well to the latter - all that's needed to make that happen are the same standards of audio reproduction at both ends of the chain. We have DSP/EQ etc. to adjust for less than ideal speaker form factors and listening environments (as well as old, poorly recorded material). You don't need to compromise the art by making it sound good on the poorest performing equipment in worst-case scenario environments. It would be madness to do this in the film industry, and frankly it's ridiculous this is still common practice by some in the music industry.
The world is not going this way, and the economic infrastructure that supports the production and consumption of music and audio is too complicated and diffuse. The cost of implementing more standardized audio is not worth the benefit.
Nothing will change for the better with that kind of fatalism. The benefit is better sounding music and preserving the artist's intent. I would definitely say this is worth it. The music production side has so far failed miserably to fix this issue by implementing standards, so unfortunately it's now down to the reproduction side to force this change. ASR is helping with this by measuring speakers and praising those that perform well according to the 'standard' of the preference formula, which will hopefully cause people to vote with their wallets and so encourage more manufacturers to follow this standard. The question many ask is, is this preference standard accurate enough? And the answer is,
it doesn't need to be 100% accurate in order to work as a standard. For example, if speakers with the same frequency response are used in the studio and at home, and the music is mastered to sound best out of that speaker, it will translate well to the home speaker, even if both speakers have say, a dip at 2kHz. The mastering engineer will simply adjust levels to account for that dip. So then the question is, why choose the particular flat anechoic on-axis response the preference formula rewards? And the answer to that is,
this is the standard least disruptive to the music industry, because it is based on the average preference of speakers in controlled, double-blind tests. In effect, most of the common arguments against the use of the preference formula are moot, because ultimately it's not really about preference - it's just a tool to ease the audio industry out of the vicious cycle of confusion it's been caught up in for decades, and towards
a standard that will put an end to all this nonsense. This is the bigger picture. A
good enough standard needs to be chosen, stuck with, and publicised, and Dr. Sean Olive's preference formula is the best one we have that I think most people will agree follows the majority of people's preference of the sound reproduction of music produced in a variety of unstandardized ways, and so will cause the least disruption to the industry in the transition phase towards standardization.