DRM-free games are pretty awesome, but what might be even better is DRM-free music. iTunes can be aggravating with their limits (even their supposedly DRM-free music has some protection on it), and not many people buy CDs from a brick-and-mortar retailer like Best Buy anymore. My favorite place to go is Amazon MP3. It automatically integrates the music into your iTunes library, and the Top 100 songs are .89 instead of .99 (though most of the Top 100 is made up of songs you hate).
Any other good places to get DRM-free music for around the same price or cheaper than the commonly-used iTunes model?

I like having the physical CD, as well as the cover booklet and so on, so I usually just buy CDs and rip them to MP3s myself.

If you're looking for something different than the popular mainstream stuff, have a look at betterpropaganda.com. They promote indie bands and have free mp3 downloads. I've found some stuff there I really like. Worth a look, anyway.

Best DRM free music can be found on Vinyl.
Every concert I go to (roughly fifteen-ish times a year) I buy everything from the band if it is in Vinyl.
OT:
If you're thinking about good drm-free music via the interweb. I usually find that Last.fm fills my needs for that one.

Both Rhapsody and Napster are DRM free now and comparable to iTunes. In fact, I don't think there are any online music retailers that still DRM their music. Even WalMart has dropped DRM from their service.

Whoops! Sorry about that, then (though that indie website that Coelocanth mentioned sounds awesome).

DRM free & $0.00 cost. Obviously quality is going to vary.
Look up something called "Net labels". I'm particularly fond of , [url=http://www.ideology.de/index2.php]iDeology, Monotonik. There's a huge amount out there, of varying genres, so google well and check each sites 'links' section.
Jamendo. Is a large site (mainly of french artists) for indies, home musicians and less established bands.
Internet Archive - Audio Section Has more stuff than you have free time...
eMusic is the indie competitor to iTunes/Amazon/etc.
(edit: Oops: this one has a cost involved.)
edit: fixed broken links.
edit2: re: emusic, I should do my own checking before posting.

I always prefer to get things on CD. With a decent sound system the difference is obvious. CDs are way better quality than MP3s. The difference becomes less noticeable with average priced headphones though. if your not going to be listening on a decent sound system, then there's nothing wrong with mp3s.
I should add that i really like Amazons service though. I just redeemed 5$ worth of free mp3s that i got for buying something on the right day i guess. Amazons downloader is about as far from bloatware as apps get, and i didn't have to use iTunes or some other media player/purchaser software. Just download them, and then drag the files into my generic brand mp3 player.

I disagree heartily. CD quality music is only about 64kbps, while you'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate MP3 download at less than 128kbps and all of the major retailers actually sell 256kbps MP3 files. The "depth" of the music sound with MP3s far outshines anything you can get on CD.

I found this on Wikipedia. Granted, Wikipedia isn't always right, but...
* 4 kb/s – minimum achieved for encoding recognizable speech (using special-purpose speech codecs)
* 8 kb/s – telephone quality
* 32 kb/s – MW quality
* 192 kb/s – Nearly CD quality for a file compressed in the MP3 format
* 1,411 kb/s – CD audio (uncompressed, 16 bit samples × 44.1 kHz × 2 channels)
Anyway, its my understanding that unless you use a lossless audio format like FLAC, its not possible to get the same quality as a CD. Its hard to tell the difference on your average set of headphones though. You need a decent sound system. I can tell the difference on my surround sound system, not so much with my headphones though. Im going by personal experience here.

I always end up getting the physical CD for any album I want, although the CD itself never actually gets played; this way I can rip the CD to whatever format and quality I want, and do it as many times as I need to in case the files ever get deleted. And until downloaded music is significantly cheaper than the physical CDs I really don't see myself changing my practices.

Yeah, Cogadh, I think you're mistaken there. From what I understand the whole point of going with a higher bit rate with MP3 (or a lossless format like FLAC) is to try to get as close as possible to CD audio quality.
For what it's worth, i prefer to buy CDs as well, but sometimes you just can't find the music you want or you want to check out something new. Free DLs of MP3s is a good way to solve both problems.

My mistake! Apologies all.
(will add edit note previous post)
Or should I say, My **big** mistake for not checking on the site after someone told me it was free. I lapsed on personal research there for a bit.

i didn't read the thread, there are some free songs, but the majority are pay as you go.
every now and then you get coupons like "50 billion songs, for free!" and they work, and I only ever get the free bajillion song deals.