Originally Posted by NRen2k5

My thoughts:

Buy CD's.

If you really insist on going the "crippled content subscription" route, then get a good soundcard that has an optical output (such as a Chaintech AV-710), and a minidisc recorder.

Okay, MiniDisc has a DRM scheme of its own, but at least it doesn't include some kind of expiry date. Your MiniDisc recordings will play forever.

A nice thing about MiniDisc is that the discs themselves are very robust; they cannot get scratched and will stand up to at least a decade of ordinary use. Your hard drive and CD-R's won't last that long.