Welcome back Manky!
As you know, I go down the not-quite-free-but-so-cheap-it-almost-is route with my vendor of choice,
Download mp3 music from megaboon.com. Other than that I use Spotify or Grooveshark. I can advise you of a very good program that will allow you to save Spotify/GS albums if you're interested. Hypothetically of course. For research.