rant about why anyone not buying music is truly destroying music and shouldn't be called a music fan (I mean the people who don't buy ANYTHING, regardless of how much they like it).

Instead I'll just say that subscription services, for me, are a pretty good deal. I presently have Rhapsody. I pay less than $15 a month and I can dowload any album I want. Their collection is pretty satisfactory, I can't find maybe 1 out of every 70 albums I search for, if that. I don't care that I don't own the mp3s and can't burn them because they allow you transfer them to specific mp3 players (The Sandisk Sansa line, some others). So I basically just keep about 20 albums on my Sansa on at a time and then switch em up when I get bored of 'em. Well worth my money cause this way I can take my music wherever.

I still buy albums too. I basically use Rhapsody to listen to albums (they are fairly high quality digital files) and then I go and order whatever I really like as a physical CD so I can rip it to FLAC and store it on my computer.

I hear Zune subscription services are just as good if not better.

So basically I have the same amount of access as the free music crowd for a very small price (less than 4 dollars a week) and all of the artists still receive some form of compensation just for me playing their songs or adding them to my library. If they're making good shit, they will receive full compensation as I will go to their websites and order their albums.