I see it as one reason why lossy won't go away: reencoding losses are the tape-to-tape copy of the digital age, the very big M, very small V MVP of DRM: if you can't keep consumers from copying, the least you can do is keeping the master copy to yourself.
> ...the least you can do is keeping the master copy to yourself.
Except that lossless audio is far from hidden and widely available as soon as you look past the iTunes store. I buy my music in a lossless digital format exclusively and frequently - from multiple stores, without any DRM and with no problems at all finding it.
If the music industry tried to lock the lossless source away, I'd say it does a very bad job.
There are others like HDTracks, but they always seem to be selling snake oil to audiophiles. Just my impression. I don't see any point in paying extra for more than CD-quality. I draw the line at 16 Bit / 44.1 KHz.
HDTracks is an example site that often has lossless for sale.
Most importantly, audio CDs still use uncompressed WAV. Buying and ripping the audio CD for a popular album is a pretty surefire method for getting a lossless copy, even if it's not always the easiest.
