I won't use either MSN (anymore) or iTunes because the bitrates are far too
low to be acceptable to me.
I had a lot of music encoded at 192 kbps but now use 400+ kbps, the
difference is very apparent and for me very important in terms of streaming
to hi-fi systems. I now use Ogg compression almost entirely and with Winamp.
Much as I originally liked WMP 10 I find it still too awkard to use.
Three sites you might like to consider:
www.audiolunchbox.com - an evergrowing range of musicians, in terms of both
genre and exposure. Recorded at 192 kbps mp3 & Q6 level Ogg.
www.archive.org (under Audio) - for free, legal live shows. You'll find
innumerable Grateful Dead shows, Little Feat, Warren Zevon and some Jefferson
Starship amongst many, many others. They offer choices of mp3, Ogg, Shorten &
FLAC as well as streaming. Try downloading either Shorten or FLAC files as
they are lossless compressions, burn to CD and then if you want also encode
for your PC to save space.
Also
www.livedownloads.com for paid for live downloads.
I know that's not quite what you were asking but I thought you might like to
know.
Steve