Now that I finally junked my 486 and entered the modern world, I’d like to start making my own CD’s and playlists but am uninitiated in what’s available, thanks
Larry
I suggest iTunes. They have a very user friendly interface and a vast catalogue. The only downside to iTunes is the inability to share music. You can authorize up to 5 other computers which I think is very unfair considering your buying the music. If I buy a CD I can share it with as many people as Id like. I look past this because their songs download quickly, they have album art, and all the information is filled out.
I recommend emusic.com. Their focus is indie stuff, though they have a lot of classical and jazz as well (and they’ve amassed quite the collection of old country as well). One big benefit is that the tracks are downloaded in .mp3 format, so you can make mix CDs, transfer them to any other computers or portable music players, basically do anything with them you want (not that this is impossible with other services, only that it may be more of a hassle). Their cheapest subscription is $9.99 per month, and that’s for 40 downloads per month, so it’s about $0.25 per song. You also get a 50-download free trial at the beginning.
Allofmp3.com is a lot cheaper than either of the businesses suggested so far, and they have a decent jazz/swing catalogue. Can’t say the same about their classical, but it’s still decent.
Without turning this into a repeat of the recent debate on the subject -
Allofmp3 may* not be legal in your jurisdiction.
*yeah, I said “may”
I don’t want to turn this to a debate either, but before you go to Allofmp3 or some other Russian pay site, just remember that almost certainly those sites aren’t paying anything to the artists. In other words, while it may be legal, it’s effectively funding piracy IMHO. If you want to get your music near-free without considering those who made it the first place, it would probably be better to just freely download through p2p networks because at least then you aren’t giving money to anything morally suspicious. (note that I’m not advocating anything, just giving something to think about)
I like the value of eMusic, but I was kind of disappointed with the selection (even if you’re into relatively underground music, the selection is still pretty thin, or at least it is for a metal-head like me), and the part that bothered me the most is how billing was handled. If you don’t use the downloads, you lose them. They give 100 free downloads for the first month, I used half of them, then got charged $9.99 and got to see my available downloads drop by 10. I cancelled before using any of those, and the account could not be used (plenty of woulda-shoulda-couldas, but in the end it puts too much responsibility on the user to get the value that is offered).
I’ve been much happier with Yahoo! Music Unlimited. For a $5/month subscription, I can listen to anything I want in their selection (which, while still imperfect, has a lot of major titles as well as a few more obscure surprises, and the selection has improved noticeably over the last year) with the only limitation that I have to listen on my computer. This includes downloading files and using WinAmp or Media Player to listen instead of the bulky Music Engine (which, I might add, is no bulkier than iTunes, which annoyed the heck out of me and gave no way I could preview), as well as some portable MP3 players that can read the license on the file.
Without a subscription, Yahoo Music offers $0.99 downloads like iTunes, but you can at least hear 30-second previews before buying the track, and with the subscription that drops to $0.79. I don’t know how this compares with Rhapsody, which I’ve heard positive comments about, but it seems a subscription of some sort is needed to listen to anything. Yahoo seems to be the only service where you can preview a song before paying anything, which is a huge plus for me.
You can do this at the Itunes Music Store too.
Another Yahoo Music Unlimited subscriber. Very happy with the service and have built a library of over 6,000 songs. My musical taste key on acoustic blues, blues, zydeco, bluegrass, & jazz and the selection of available tunes to pull from is outstanding, even for my non top 40 preferences. I also purchased a Dell DJ mp3 player and was able to easily transfer my subscription music to the player. At home I have an audio feed from my PC into my receiver and keep the player running on full random every night.
Forgot to add to the above comments:
Yahoo subscription music cannot be burned onto a CD
iPods are not compatible (reason I purchased the Dell DJ)
iTunes
Yes you can share the music because yes you did buy the CD.
Yes you can listen to a 30 second preview of the song, and that 30 second clip is of perfect quality and (on my connection at least) begins to play immediately when you click it without any sort of download/buffering/etc. delay.
If you want to share your music, you have to burn a CD (in CD format, i.e. 74 min. of data) and import the music back in as an MP3. This seems a fair method to me–and anyone who doesn’t make a hard copy of their downloaded music is just looking for trouble regardless of anything.
Any sites in which the music downloads are closer to 50 cents?
I recommend Magnatune.Their slogan is “We’re a record label. But we’re not evil.” 
Their blurb:
When you buy an album, you get a password to the album’s files on their site, a password that’s good for 45 days. You can download MP3s, Ogg files, or even uncompressed WAV files for making your own CD.
As I said, Emusic is a quarter per track, even less if you go with one of their higher-volume plans, and less still if you factor in the free trial.
Ah, this reminds me of another feature of Emusic that I neglected to mention: They keep track of what you’ve already downloaded and you have access to it. This means that you aren’t charged for downloading the same song twice, so if you accidentally delete the copy you downloaded, you’re free to download it again.
That’s true of iTunes. Getting a hard copy has to do with fate not Apple.
Really, never found that. Guess I didn’t try hard enough 
There’s also Napster.com. They’ve got a pretty big selection (last I heard, they claim 1.5 million tracks) and there’s a good variety to it. You can either buy tracks individually (99 cents each), or use Napster-To-Go, which is their subscription service. Napster-To-Go lets you have unlimited songs for a monthy fee. I’m not sure how much the subscription service costs, but it’s probably about the same as iTunes. I think that you’re allowed to have your music on three computers and two mp3 players. If you’ve bought the songs, you can burn them to CDs. You can also use their “sync” feature to re-download your music if you lose it. All of their music is in WMA format, which is more compact than mp3, so you can fit more music onto your player.
how about free downloads?
ETunes has a darn good plan, BUT is there any way to search its inventory without first subscribing?
That’s a problem I had with several of the aforementioned services.