Crutchfield's Speaker Compare

This sounds as useful as the speaker demos people post on YouTube!

Which are indeed useful. My Moabs were purchased without audition, and part of my search process involved listening to them on the same YouTube videos you disparage. They sound just as expected from those videos.

Before that I bought a Herron VTPH2A and Koetsu Black Goldline, both also "auditioned" watching useful YouTube videos. Lo and behold, they sound as expected.

A lot more went into selecting those components than just listening to them off my laptop. A lot more. But those YouTube videos are indeed very very useful.

At least, they are useful once you learn to listen.

Indeed!! And what Crutchfield did, I think it's better, since in many of the Youtube videos you can't really compare. 

Is it like auditioning speakers live? Obviously not. But it can help you get an idea of one speaker’s more pronounced characteristics in comparison to another’s. Helps get you in the ballpark. For those who don’t have a shop near them, it’s better than nothing.

They've been doing it for a long while, using a much more accurate and consistent method than assorted Yutes.
Too bad they specialize in MidFi.
Even shows are a bad compare because every room is different. But at least it takes the mics out of the chain.

IMO, this would be useless for any audio store to do this for a number of reasons:
1) YouTube sound is terrible at best
2) what are they going to use for front end equipment? You can’t use the same amp for each speaker because speakers sound characteristics and sensitive will dictate which amp to use. For example, you wouldn’t team up a pair of Klipsch speakers with an analytical sounding amp, nor would you team up a 84db rated speaker with a cheap low power amp.
3) Since crutchfield only deals with cheaper equipment, you could afford to take a gamble on buying a pair of speakers after doing some reading on google and if you don’t like them, either send them back or resell them. But for a more expensive speaker system, I would go listen to them somehow 1st before bringing them home and listening to them with your equipment in your room