To anyone else who still wants to own their own music, I highly recommend looking at Jriver Media Center. Not free, and it is a bit of a strange application at first. But I find it extremely capable and flexible, and because it is just a player, they have an interest in catering to you instead of the copyright rentiers.
I use it with my main stereo and stream music to network players in other rooms. (It does video stuff too, I don't use any of that.)
Where do you source your originals? Bandcamp is my go to, but not all artists publish there. Amazon often has physical CDs and MP3s for artists, but I have not patronized them for such goods (yet).
My process for downloading from Bandcamp, extracting the files, and syncing them to the storage could be automated a bit more I think.
Same here, except I went with a self-hosted Emby server. For me, one of the real valuable features of GPM was the ability to sync playlists and albums locally on my PC or phone. Emby lets me do that, but it infortunately doesn't sync playlists yet. I don't think Jellyfin has any local sync support, though.
I use it with my main stereo and stream music to network players in other rooms. (It does video stuff too, I don't use any of that.)
No connection to them other than as a happy customer. https://jriver.com/