I organize my music library at the file level rather than at the tag level (although I still tag my files, because I have a particular naming scheme I like for everything). This is because I have so much music that it's kept on an external HDD, and I wouldn't be able to properly tag everything to my liking if I spent a hundred years on it. So I've always resisted using the iTunes-like programs that try to organize all my music for me, both due to tagging issues and having the database explode if I disconnect the drive. My music is organized according to my own system, and it works for me.

In Winamp, when I wanted to play an album, I opened the directory containing my music, find the artist, right clicked on the album, and selected "Play/Enqueue in Winamp". Winamp would launch, I would immediately minimize it to the system tray, and it would be out of my way except occasionally popping up notifications on Play/Pause/Stop or when tracks changes. It was perfect for my needs.

Audacious is the app I found that comes closest to replicating that workflow. I select a folder, "Open With -> Audacious", it kicks off, I close (to tray), and it plays on with occasional notifications. That's all I want. It's also got MPRIS integration so I can control playback from the bar, so that's pretty sweet too.

This actually sounds very close to my personal preference -- I just configure Quod Libet to only show full path and the "search everything" functionality lets me just search for the album name and have everything match + Ctrl+A + right-click + Enqueue.

I'm a big-time fan of QL as well, it's just so ridiculously configurable, and the library management is the best I've ever used. It lets you define your tags to the smallest detail, and use every single one of those tags for organizing it. You can do all sorts of highly specific searches and filters, I think even with full regex support.