which is worse?

there are several albums right now that i want to buy but have decided not to purchase in cd form. i think cds are great, and it is nice to have this physical thing, but then you have to move it, and i have a lot of those physical things already. i actually have so many mp3 cds left over from my freewheelin' days of marauding emusic's catalog that it's kinda annoying. then they went over to a 40 downloads per month limit and after getting annoyed with the results (they recommend an album, it stinks, and you're out a quarter of your monthly limit), i finally gave up on them. however, i have recently realized they have almost every one of the albums i want to purchase, and they still provide everything in vbr mp3 format. i find the subscription model, at this point, a bit vexing. they've dropped the download limit to 30, but i would agree that the now-humongous catalog makes it worth it. problem is, i don't want the subscription. i'd probably pay them like 75 cents a track even to download all the mp3s i cared to acquire. i'd also be cool with plunking down the $99 or so for a year's subscription if i could download all 360 tracks as soon as i wanted. alas, that's not how it works.

so the question is, would i rather have music from itunes that costs maybe twice as much ($10 for an album vs $10 for 30 downloads) and is drm'd, or nice clean mp3s from emusic and an annoying subscription. it's like another chore you have to go through at the beginning of every month - cut hair, update resume, return library books, buy the next 30 tracks on your list. the problem is, their business model counts on garnering an average price per download that's higher than what they nominally charge. like a health club, which gets your money whether you show up or not. so do i prefer my freedom from subscriptions, or my freedom from drm? not sure. in all honesty, apple's drm implementation won't give you headaches unless you want to depart the flock and buy someone else's music player.