[rsync]

"Where do you get the music from though?"

I personally download actual mp3 files from Amazon (not amazon "music" but just purchase actual tracks). In fact, I continue to be pleasantly surprised that in 2018 one of the big providers is doing something as simple and friendly as this: selling me unprotected, plain old mp3 files.

However, they are compressed mp3 files and not suitable for future transformation so if there is an album that I want, I will still purchase the actual CD and rip it to the full WAV/PCM.

My system is a mac pro (2009) which still has an optical drive. I use the (excellent) 'abcde'[1] tool to rip the CDs. I particularly like the fact that it pops up a 'vi' session with the gracenote/cddb/metadata so I can quickly "fix" the usually braindead cddb entry right in the workflow.

[1] http://www.andrews-corner.org/linux/abcde/index.html

[ryanmonroe]

The files you get from iTunes are also unprotected. Artists can choose to offer lossless format, in which case iTunes will give you the files in their proprietary format ALAC, but there is still no DRM and you can easily convert to FLAC/WAV.