I have terabytes of pirated music....that I hardly ever listen to because it's too much work to load up the player and find something to play. I much prefer google play, with their algorithms for finding new music for me, instead of me having to hunt for it. Looking at multi-terabyte directories and trying to decide what to listen to is just overwhelming. Google Play has introduced me to several new artists and a couple entire genre's of music that I would have never otherwise found, and $15/mo is well worth it.
exactly. Before I had google play I'd end up playing from the same set or leaving off with the same directory that I had listened to before. I'm also a fan of XM radio because while driving it's too much work to pull up the phone and start a playlist, and to an extent I do like the (one-sided) human "contact" of having the DJ announce the songs and make occasional chatter (even if I begrudgingly complain about it sometimes). I tried Radio Garden [1] but found myself still listening to top-40 adult contemporary crap.
It's a pain if it isn't organized well. When it is organized well, it's the best.
I have mpd+emms set up with an always on emms playlist window and dedicated dired window for my music collection.
I can't say the same for my book collection though. I tried calibre but didn't like it. Been experimenting with some custom scripts that work but are in dire need of indexing and optimization.
I had this problem, but then I just installed foobar2000 and quicksearch plugin, point it at my p2p disk root, exclude video files. Fast start-up and instant tag search through hundreds of gigs of flac. If you're in the Ts of MP3s range then YMMV, I've never had that many files.
Run a Plex server, and you can stream your own library of music from anywhere (one-time $5 purchase for your mobile app). Of course, this doesn't solve the issue of recommendations, but I personally see discovery and collection as two different roles which can be filled by two different models/services.