1. I interact directly with the act via their own website.
  2. I download (middling-quality) MP3 tracks for free and listen to the music for a few days or weeks.
  3. If I like the music enough to want to have it in my library, I go to the act’s website to buy it. If not, I delete the MP3 tracks.
  4. I specify the price I’m willing to pay.
  5. I download a zip file containing 320 KBps FLAC tracks and JPEG art files.
  6. I use Max to convert the FLAC tracks to Apple Lossless tracks.
  7. I import the tracks into my iTunes library, add the art, and enter the metadata for each track.
Seeing as Max is Open Source, I see an opportunity here for some software to automate all this. Imagine dragging that downloaded zip file onto “MaxiTunes”, having it pop up a simple interface for entering metadata, and then it takes care of converting the tracks, adding the metadata, importing them into iTunes, and moving the original files to the trash. I’d be willing to contribute funds to a developer willing to give this a try.

Update: It turns out that I underestimated Max. Apparently if a FLAC file contains metadata, it’ll be preserved during the conversion. And if not, Max has built-in metadata editing. It can also automatically add converted tracks to iTunes, and even to a specific playlist. Impressive! I like Max a lot – it’s fast, effective, reliable, free, and Free. My only real quibble would be that the UI is a little confusing. Just a little though.