Are the loudness wars fake so record companies can destroy the music?

If compressing makes quiet passages easier to hear, what is the disadvantage?

Part of the power and emotion in music is attributable to dynamic range. It’s why composers include such notation in their scores. The nuance of a solo oboe and the thwack of a tympani are two different things. Yet a tympani can also be used to create a gentle roll, which is distinguished (in part) from the thwack by volume difference - dynamic range.

... what is the advantage of not being able to hear quieter passages in uncompressed material?

None at all! That’s why we have compression. But you can hear much deeper into a wide DR recording if you’re listening in a quiet room than you can in a noisy subway car.

Can it be that complaints about the sound are more due to something else than to the dynamic range?

... most of what people hear through ear buds is normalized ... if that normalization decreases the volume of overly compressed songs there is no real benefit even where there is background noise. The softer bits will be made softer by the normalization. To hear them the volume has to be turned up by the user.....just like with an uncompressed song.

The problem is that compression doesn’t actually make it sound as good as possible on typical devices and normalization often renders even that ’effect’ pointless.

... most people nowadays listen to music in noisy environments, and unless the music is loud and compressed they don‘t get to hear the quiet bits. The profits lie where the majority of consumers exist.
We are a distinct minority.