Cost- and effort-effective way to end up with a large HD full of lossless classical music, legally.

• Cost- and effort-effective way to end up with a large HD full of lossless classical music, legally. Well, after my question http://ask.metafilter.com/107210/Please-recommend-some-247-classical-music-internet-radio-streams-that-never-feature-Fred-Child, I'm still not quite satisfied with the quality of my worktime music listening. I'm over my requirement for enjoyable-to-listen-to DJs, which isn't happening in combination with playlists I like, but I'm starting to get annoyed by the digital compression of internet radio. So, I was wondering if it is possible to provide my own classical radio, to myself, by stocking my work HD with large amounts of music I'm likely to enjoy hearing but haven't heard all of before, at lossless or near-lossless quality. Given the following conditions: 1. My fantasy: I would be happy to hear any non-symphonic, non-opera composition written by any European composer known or unknown during the centuries 12-19. Rather than excluding anything out of hand that fits those conditions, I would love the opportunity to hear it and if I hate it I'll take it out of the queue. Hearing some symphonic music or opera isn't a problem, but getting it into the playlist is not a goal of this undertaking. Non-operatic vocal music and proto-opera like Camerata is fine. 2. I'd like to do it legally, without individually purchasing vast amounts of CDs and ripping vast amounts of CDs. I don't have the time or money to build up a new digital music library one CD at a time. I also can't afford to pay for a big classical music library recording-by-recording on iTunes. I don't want to specify what would be too expensive, other than to say that a retail per-album payment approach to creating a radio-station-sized playlist or bigger will be too expensive. 3. Any top-tier performers, any high-fidelity recordings are fine with me. I'm OK with quirks of analog recording, so I guess that pretty much any high-quality recording after the late 50s is going to fit the bill. Please restrict commentary on my total lack of standards about important things combined with freakish pickiness about unimportant things to Memail. 4. I'm up to the task of getting any sound format into one I need for my own setup in an automated fashion. If something is available in a country that I'm not in, I'll do the legwork of figuring out whether it's an option. OK. So, obviously what I've just described is not even remotely possible. There is no "legally purchase an enormous hard drive full of a single good example of every non-operatic, non-symphonic composition written by a European composer between the 12th and 19th century, performed by anyone acknowledged to be good, recorded decently, in lossless format" product. I doubt it would fit on even a 2TB drive in any case. My question: what is the closest I can get (even if it's very, very far away), for the least money, as a result of investing the least effort? Examples I could imagine would be: sources of lossless (or at least top-quality lossy) public domain recordings (lots of link-clicking is not excessive effort), labels that sell drives full of their back-catalog releases for much less than the cost of purchasing them at retail, download services that have bulk download deals of recordings that are not the latest and hottest with lossless (or at least top-quality lossy) formats. Thank you for any suggestions!

• Answer:

  I can't look it up on my phone right now, but the Deutsche Grammophon web shop has 320 rate MP3's, and there may be a lossless option as well. Their prices are equivalent to or lower than Amazon MP3. DG label only, of course, but that's quite a lot.