There's only one way to get DRM-free stuff: P2P. Subsequently, you can make all the purchases you want and crack them. The industry is a bitch, I'm bitcher than it....

Didn't read the through the whole thread, but about the "CD quality is only about 64 kbps" comment:
CD's are not compressed. They contain the whole, unaltered, raw data of a song, about 1400kbps. They only way anything can sound better than a CD (which is the source data for both, audio downloads and modern LPs), is by either adding more information (48/96khz or 6/8 channels) or by using DSP effects (or in case of the LP: analog effects like wave smoothing that are just part of the system) and neither applies to music downloads (no shop that I'm aware of uses DSP processing during encoding).

I'm gonna stick with the tried and tested ripping from CDs. (that I own, I might add).
I used to be into the Napster thing, as well as a whole load of other stuff I'd rather not mention for various reasons, but I'm clean now, and I prefer to have a physical copy of the stuff.
The only time I have trusted a legitimate digital downloading service has been with GoG, everything else is too DRM heavy or has no option for re-downloading if you lose your copy. (that may have changed in recent months/years.)
For example, there was a recent download event by Nine Inch Nails, which I bought instead, cos I admired their methods! I doubt they're hurting for cash though.
Just bought myself a pair of BOSE stereo speakers today, and by god the quality is damned fine for a speaker pair.

Same here. I love browsing the booklet and looking at the content while listening :)

Well, ill just stick my 2 cents here:
Even though CD's are not compressed, they hold digital information and as such the quality of the CD depends on the quality of the sampling or enconding which in the case of audio CD is 44.1 kHz (which means roughly 44 000 samplins per second, if i'm not mistaken on the conversion here).
What happens is sound has the form of a wave when you get it on cd that wave will be composed of tinny little "ladders", wich means we will never get a true soundwave from cd's. The only real and "uncompressed" are those from analogic media (vynil and tapes), that is why still tmost audiophiles prefer vynil instead of cd's.
There is alsothe SACD, that if i'm not mistaken has a higher sampling rate but still it is not a 100% genuine high fidelity copy of the original.

Correct, the smoothness of the wave can not be preserved on CD. I was talking about digital audio (and digital audio transferred to LP, which is the majority of all modern LPs) and it's just not possible.
It was just a response to the "MP3s sound better than CD" comment.

When speaking of sampling rates for a digitally stored sound, as long as the sampling rate is twice the frequency of the sound being recorded then the digital recording is pretty much a perfect reconstruction of the recorded sound that is indistinguishable from the original. Now, considering that the upper limit of human hearing is about 20 kHz, a sampling rate of 44 kHz is quite adequate to perfectly reconstruct any sounds we as humans are capable of hearing. So whenever "audiophiles" go off about sampling rate they're pretty much full of it. Now, the over-compression that we're forced to deal with from the loudness war is an entirely different matter...

While I can't answer your question about other services, I'm pretty sure that iTunes downloads are now unprotected .m4a files (not .m4p). You could even transcode them to another format like MP3 from within iTunes (without perceptible quality loss, given that the source is 256k AAC), and then manage them as you see fit.
EDIT: I just noticed eMusic mentioned above, which I used to subscribe to. I still have the MP3s I purchased during my subscription, but I strongly recommend browsing their selection. They have some great artists, but their portfolio excludes most major labels.

The thing about living in the free market metropolis called Hong Kong (I urge you to come here!) is that we still don't have the iTunes Music Store! Or Amazon's music service. All we get is piddly Audible (if I lie about my address) and eMusic. Well, sometimes I don't want to listen to Paul McCartney on eMusic... even if it is glorious MP3. So please, expand you damn service Apple so that I can actually buy your un-DRM music!

How's that law called again? We learned about it at school, but I can't remember (that was a long time ago). Anyway, double frequency works for most people... the point of an LP is more that it "smooths" the whole thing. A CD, after being transferred to an LP sounds different. Not better in my opinion, but definitely different.

The double frequency comes out of the Nyquist-Shannon theorem. And there are definitely other factors in the recording of music and the conversion between formats that can change the sound, I have no disagreement there, I just had a small nitpick about sampling rate that I wanted to clear up.

If you're already at DRM Free,
let's go on and talk about free music:
Phlow Magazine features good free music.
Most of them are a 'lil chillout, well, you can hear into them right on the site.
They always stream some and link to the albums etc.
www.phlow-magazine.com
Especially their collections are awesome:
phlow-magazine.com/mp3-music-download/free-compilation/745-nivel-del-mar-sounds-for-soulsurfers
phlow-magazine.com/mp3-music-download/pop/851-catchy-pop-tunes-fall-is-for-lovers
phlow-magazine.com/mp3-music-download/free-compilation/285-phlow-presents-their-finest-hour-vol-1
phlow-magazine.com/mp3-music-download/free-compilation/332-netlabel-compilation-their-finest-hour-2
phlow-magazine.com/mp3-music-download/free-compilation/411-netlabel-compilation-their-finest-hour-3
Just awesome!
/e:
My god, links were fucked up...
/e:
wtf is this, http does not work, www also only links the domain...
What a parser...