I’ve found some good music at music.download.com, although it takes some searching.
PayPlay has a bunch of cheap or free music but it’s largely by unsigned artists so don’t go there looking for almost anyone you’ve heard of. I think the largest “name” they have on there is Ingrid Michaelson and she’s the exception rather than the rule. I also found some Katie Grey track which the wife had heard on Grey’s Anatomy or Gossip Girl or Bones or wherever kids hear new music on TV these days.
Still, I’ve picked up songs from there just by browsing around by genre and listening to samples. They also have “Karma tracks” which are free by using points you get just for logging on. 192k rate, DRM free and all that jazz.
My new favorite is lala.com. Similar to amazon in that you get high-quality, DRM-free music from a large, recording industry sanctioned catalog. You can buy in 2 options. For .10 you get permanent access to stream a particular song from lala.com an unlimited number of times. For .79-.89, you get the DRM-free MP3 track. The nice thing is that if you have already purchased a song for streaming, if you decide to download the track later, the .10 gets credited toward the purchase of the song. There are some great deals on full album downloads too. While the amazon store has a slightly larger catalog, for artists and songs that lala.com has, they are generally the cheapest around.
Another nifty thing they do is scan (with your permission) your music collection…this gives you unlimited streaming of any music you already own, regardless of how you obtained it (it’s an amnesty for previous “pirates” designed to transition you to the buying model). This has been great as I am at my folks house, and away from my collection, for the holidays. By logging in to lala.com, I have my full collection at my fingertips for listening. It’s pretty slick.