Taiyo Yuden is generally regarded as THE brand. You can find it at supermediastore.com and other places I'm sure.
It used to be that there was a wide gap in brand quality. Anyone remember green dye CDs? I had several go bad after a year. I lost some really important stuff. I haven't had any problems with CD-R media in 2-3 years, but I have no idea what the actual long term shelf life is, even though the claims are high.
I'm sure many brands are just that...BRANDS. I would bet there is some serious overlap in actual media with TDK, Maxelle, Verbatim, etc.