It's time to ditch iTunes - any suggested alternatives?

[ethelthefrog]

OK I think my patience has finally run out. Apple’s new Music app in Catalina has eliminated it’s most useful management feature, the Column Browser. Clearly Apple feels only casual pop listeners matter and that there’s no more room for collectors who’ve built large libraries on their software for almost 20 years.

I’m looking for your solutions for managing my library. In iTunes, the most powerful tools were:

• Column Browser for easy navigation of a large library
• Grouping - which was useful for sub-genres
• Star Ratings - for separating wheat from chaff on a useful scale
• Smart Playlists - to collect groups of songs in a large library

As great as it is as a player, Roon is not yet ready to be a serious management platform. it just can’t ‘slice and dice’ a large library in a useful way. I realize many people are moving to NUCs and Nucleus’ and the like, but I still need to be able to manage my library in a fast and flexible way. None of the streaming services offers a robust music management platform.

How do you manage your library to gain control of a large library?