I went through a similar phase where I thought, how hard can it be to just manage my own music like it's 2008 again? Turns out, kind of annoyingly hard. The part about music players being stuck in time really hit. Winamp nostalgia aside, most local players feel like they haven't evolved in a decade

That's why the author moved beyond that stage and to apps that connect to existing music libraries hosted on jellyfin. Apparently there are a lot more options out there than I knew about.

My question would then be, what do you think needs "evolving"? This space hasn't seen transformative changes in decades, with ample time to converge towards effective paradigms and implementations. Stability would be pretty much what I would expect, or even desire there.

Roon is where it’s at if you want a decent music player. Not free but well worth the price, imo.