Why lossy compression is sometimes preferred?

Lossy compression is used to reduce data size or storing, handling and transmitting content. The amount of data reduction possible using lossy compression is much higher than the lossless techniques.

It is most commonly used to compress multimedia data (audio, video, image) especially in applications such as streaming media and internet telephony. It can produce a much smaller compressed file than any lossless method while still meeting the requirement of the application data files using lossy compression are smaller in size and thus cost less to store and and to transmit over the internet.