Universal Music Group audible watermarking on digital downloads?

Question

Hello,
I wanted to take a moment to praise Apple for being so patient and persistent around a sound quality issue I've been noticing for months with certain of my digital purchases from the iTunes Music Store.
Start of story: I noticed that certain of my classical albums purchased had this very strange "fluttery" sound, most noticeable during quiet passages, or with solo instruments with pure tones (flute, clarinet, oboe), or soprano solo singing.
At first, I thought it might be an artifact of the bitrate or encoding of the file.  I raised this with Apple, and they confirmed that no, the files were at the maximum AAC quality.  I have listened to plenty of other music with similar kinds of quiet passages and pure notes, from the iTunes store, and never noticed this issue.
After making more purchases over a period of months, I finally started to notice a commonality: all of the purchases of classical music from labels under the Universal Music Group -- Deutsche Grammophon and Decca, L'Oiseau-Lyre, EMI -- had this fluttery sound issue.
I continued to be mystified, and Apple did everything they could, refreshing the purchases I'd made on the server side and having me re-download to make sure there were no issues with the files Apple had available.
Well, finally, a professional recording engineer pointed this link out to me:
http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark
The author, Matt Montag, is an engineer for Spotify, and has obviously done some close analysis of the nature of the problem.
You will find other references to Universal Music Group's audible watermarking of their files online, stretching back to 2011, maybe earlier.
I find this an abhorrent practice, not because I object to UMG's need to protect its digital rights, but because it is basically selling damaged goods at regular prices, without any indication that is the case.
I have pointed this out to Apple, as well as to the music label, and don't expect anything to come of it, unfortunately. 
For me, it makes certain historic, well-known recordings by DG artists of some of the most beautiful repertoire in the world -- international treasures, that should be protected for all time, and shared properly, uncontaminated, with those who make a legitimate purchase -- virtually unlistenable.
I hope anyone else noticing this will also report it to Universal Music Group.  It is not an Apple quality issue, but something they clearly have to put up with from this particular publisher.
Apple has gone to great lengths to help me, but this is beyond their control.  I hope you can help them change that, as customers who should not be treated in such a shoddy way.
Please listen carefully to any UMG purchases you have, particularly quiet passages, solo instruments in acoustic spaces, solo voices; if you notice this issue, report it to UMG.
There are certainly technologies out there that can serve the security and tracking goals UMG seeks, without distorting the sound; with the watermarking technology they have committed to for those purposes presently, they are degrading distribution of their massive library of historic music, and destroying our ability to enjoy these international treasures, and, in the long run, their ability to profit from them.
Thanks for listening.

Answer 1

Sadly, this is still present to a large extent, and it affects more than just UMG itself and more than just classical. It extends to labels distributed by UMG in North America: Disney and Marvel for one thing, but every other label distributed digitally through UMG. It also extends to pop and country (and no doubt every other genre). It's really pathetic on Universal's part that they're selling this absolutely unlistenable trash. As the original poster mentioned, they're selling damaged goods and knowingly so, with no disclaimer or warning to customers. I would venture to state that the number of defective track and albums that Universal sold exposes them to a risk of a class action lawsuit.
Sometime in 2014 I posted a rant to Universal Classics' Facebook pages. A very nice rep by the name of Danielle took it seriously and we exchanged a series of messages on the topic. I sent Danielle a number of examples (actually dozens) of affected recordings (Decca, DGG, Philips). At that time, the response she had was that this appears to be a Universal Music Canada issue and she would escalate as needed (even though she actually represented Universal USA). Reading the online forums though, it clearly isn't limited to Canada.
The bad news, is that the few times I contacted iTunes about it, the response I received was completely ridiculous. The last time, the iTunes rep sent me a canned response stating they had thoroughly examined the tracks I reported as defective, and determined that there's nothing wrong and the tracks sound "as the artist intended". I seriously doubt any artists would like to be reduced to ugly digital noise that sounds like a poorly compressed 56kbps file.
I suppose it raises another issue: no doubt the iTunes staff, if they did review the tracks, did so either on (a) laptop speakers, or (b) through the atrocious Apple earbuds. Considering how everything sounds bad on those, I don't doubt they heard nothing wrong. But the response remains ludicrous.
Perhaps the worse news, is that iTunes isn't the only one affected. I downloaded some items from 7Digital and they were equally bad; exhibiting the same issues.
The good news, is that it appears to have ceased. More recent Universal releases (say mid 2014 till now) don't show this annoying fluttering.
The even better news, for classical music at least, is that Warner got the EMI Classics catalog after Universal's purchase of EMI, and Warner releases have been thankfully free of this nonsense.
The result of this Universal fiasco, is that:
(a) I have had to repurchase a bunch of digital downloads on CD (I'm tempted to send Universal the sales receipt with a request for refund; their choice whether they want to reimburse me the iTunes purchase or the CD prices)
(b) I have significantly curtailed my iTunes purchases; reverting instead to old habits like, believe it or not, ordering CDs from Amazon
(c) Avoiding Universal Music releases wherever possible.