I'm not saying it is ideal, but the used CD market is hugely depressed right now. I buy a ton of used CDs at various downscale businesses and rip them into iTunes with Apple Lossless. Some of the stores will run them through the disc cleaner/polisher as a matter of course and they rip fine.

I'd love to be able to buy DRM-free 24/96 lossless versions of all the music I actually want but buying used CDs for under $2 apiece seems like a reasonable compromise to me. For the moment if I can't find particular albums on CD in the used market I either buy them from eBay sellers or do without. The remaining chain retail vendors for CDs such as Best Buy have a pretty hopelessly bad selection these days.