Improvements to Internet Radio Streaming Bitrates

Many of the people that have posted to Audiogon have said that Internet music streaming has exceptional content but very poor sound quality. While some companies have offered 128k, 192k 256k and 320k bit rates, the resulting sound quality using the MP3 format is certainly not the very best. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates (debatable). However, AAC is still not the very best in producing quality sound on a high end audio system.

Looking forward to the next several years, what changes (if any) to the bit format and format is reasonable to assume will happen that will greatly improve the sound quality? I know that the amount of video and audio content is growing very quickly over the Internet. It would be great if everyone could use the standard AIFF uncompressed format but I doubt that will happen because of the large amount of bandwidth required to transmit. Internet music streaming is terrific because of the large amount of content and options to choose from. For example, ROKU 3 has 85 music channels.

Does anyone have any insights into possible improvements or comments in general?