Effects of listening to music always in MP3 format [closed]

"It is more likely to be the loud volumes in your ears that will damage them.
Differentiating a 320Kbps MP3 from a FLAC or Audio CD is difficult even for most healthy ears.

The BBC article referred above may be similar to your source.
If so, it is an excellent example of incorrect titles for articles
that source many urban-myths.
The article title goes: MP3 users hearing damage warning ...
But says things along these lines,

A recent study by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) found
39% of 18 to 24-year-olds listened to personal music players for at least an hour every day
and 42% admitted they thought they had the volume too high.

Another article clearly mentions high decibels causing hearing loss,
Experts fear iPods, MP3 players may lead to hearing-loss epidemic

""The iPods have been measured at nearly 130 decibels.
A jet engine is 133 decibels from 100 feet away,""
said Rick Kottler, executive director of Deaf and Hard Hearing Services of the Treasure Coast.

Bottom line, check the volume button rather than the audio bitrate.

Further reading for ear-phone users (that includes me).
Causes of Tinnitus - Protect Your Ears -- How Loud is Loud.

To hear music against the background city noise (90-96dB),
you will most likely push 20dB beyond it -- (somwhere like 110dB).
Compare that in the linked article -- add in any more references you get."

"There is some evidence to suggest that continued exposure to mp3s over lossless formats tends to make you prefer the artefacts introduced during compression to the raw, unadulterated audio.

As for damage to hearing, as other people have commented it can't damage your hearing unless it is deafening you with excessive volume."

"The claim sounds more like the lament of an audio connoisseur. In much the same way that a food connoisseur might lament that people who regularly consume foods containing corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, supermarket ""meat and carrageenan"" deli products, etc. that they now fail to notice or appreciate the superiority of foods made from more natural unprocessed fresher ingredients.

When listening to MP3 files was something new, the compression artifacts stood out and bothered people more, in sort of the same way that the first audience to hear Stravinsky's ballet ""The Rite of Spring"" in 1913 literally rioted. In time, just as people a generation ago got so used to the distortions of vinyl recordings that some actually preferred them to CDs, we got used to the MP3 compression artifacts and just learned to accept them.

You can still appreciate how an audiophile must feel when some whipper-snapper contends that his 128kbps MP3 file sounds ""better than the CD"" once you punch a little EQ in there and turn on the 3D stereo ambience effect."

Persistently listening to loud music will result in a loss of hearing capability. Listening to one sound or another at safe volumes will not physically damage the ear, but listeners will most likely become accustomed to the sound of MP3s. However, most people use crap ear-buds and MP3 quality isn't the problem there. Besides, it's not a one-way street.

"Dont be confused. The differences in audio file formats are just to help the device, e.g a computer that is interpreting it into sound to know how to go about doing it. Once this music file, however the format it was created with is changed to sound wave, then the output its sound wave and there's nothing like mp3 sound wave or AAC sound wave or whatever, sound wave is sound wave is sound wave so long as its vibration of air molecules at a frequency suitable for the ears. I think you should rather be concerned about how loud is the sounds youre feeding your ear drums.
So, the differences in music formats are the businesses of the device transforming them to sound vaves and not the business of your ears. Your ear hears sound waves so long as the frequency is not too high."