Most popular works produced in this decade are already so compressed that you can't tell much difference between the original and a recording of it having been compressed yet again

I agree with your premises, but you are conflating two unrelated phenomena that have the same name -- 1) the dynamic range compression that audio engineers do in the studio (and in live arenas), which minimizes volume changes in the sound; and 2) data compression, which MP3 encoders do and which affects file size but not dynamic range.

Hula seems to have a lot of killer-calendar potential but probably has a little ways to go. I installed it yesterday and I'm starting to play around with it. Any positive/negative experiences?