Re: What's the best (legal) way to buy, store and play music?
If you check your car CD player, it may support MP3 CDs. You can get 8-9 albums onto one CD in this way, as good as a CD changer in the car.
What can be done if this is the case:
Record CDs onto computer in MP3 format. Copy these to a portable MP3 player, which can go walkies with you. CDs remain at home, where they are safe, and won't get scratched or stolen from your bag etc. You can then record separate MP3 CDs for the car, and they live in the car, again its no bother if they get stolen from the car, they can be re-recorded easily.
As for the legalities of all of this, I'm not sure about it. According to some recent posts, it would appear to be illegal to make more than one copy of content for personal use, but seeing as you can't listen to more than one copy at the same time, I don't see any issue with it. What would be an issue is if you gave the copies to someone else.