I have noticed that there are 3 main places to download songs for under $1US. They are Apple's ITunes, Buymusic and Musicmatch. I think that this is a great idea because I would be able to buy songs that I want and wouldn't have to buy the whole CD (although I will still buy some CDs for the cover art, lyrics, DVD, etc. that I really like).

I am not going to start buying songs online until they start offering something higher than 128K. I used to encode all of my songs at 192K (I can tell a small difference between 128 and 192 which is enough for the extra 20-30% space). I have recently started encoding at 256K because I feel for backing up purposes, it is the most accurate reproduction of the frequency spectrum without taking up too much space (ie 384K).

Every place offers near CD-quality. I think that they should give you the option of what you want to download since you are paying for it anyway. If you buy the CD, you can rip and encode at whatever bitrate you want.

Ahh well,
Just my thoughts.