Tim Bray recently likened MP3 encoding of music to Vandalism, and again made the point in more detail when discussing a New York Times article about online music purchasing.

While I agree that 128Kbps MP3s are not really up to scratch, it's worth noting that at least one online music vendor, Magnatune, lets you download your music in a number of different formats, including two lossless formats, and a couple of higher-than-usual-quality lossy formats. More should follow their lead, as I've not been happy with the quality of files from another online music vendor.