I recognize the points that you bring up. Our circumstances were different and our choices have been different. I had the time to rip CDs and was willing to make the effort.
I waited to start moving to files rather than CDs until I could store music as Flac files rather than MP3s. My reason was simple: I wanted the same music on computer files as on the CDs I had purchased. I expected to need 1 TB of storage before I stopped acquiring music. At the time that meant 4 250 GB hard drives. I delayed purchasing drives until I needed them; technology advanced and I wound up using 2 500 GB drives.
The ID3 tag standards did get better for classical music. The problem was that ripping s/w and music layers didn't use the extra capabilities for tagging MP3s or Flac files. JRiver s/w was by far the best s/w for classical music that I found. I could populate whatever tags I wanted when I ripped CDs and I could use any of those tags in browsing and selecting music.
Wombat talked about wading through layers of menus to find music. JRiver allowed me to define views that showed me what was in my collection. Here is a screenshot of the view I've used for classical music. I can scroll through the list of composers, artists (performers), works and versions in any order. When I select a composer, the other lists are narrowed to just those tag values present in files with the select composer tag value.
With love and respect to all, especially "Old Listener", and sure, different strokes for different folks, but if this old listener had to face a screen like that in order to play a record, he would rather hang himself. I have computers, naturally, but find no charm or joy in them. Total buzzkill, which is the opposite of what I need.
