It's funny how quantity has a lack of quality all it's own.

My own take for getting surprised is to check out (usually) European jazz radio stations on internet radio.

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.

[1] https://radio.garden/

Have you tried foobar2000 or AirSonic?

foobar2000 handles my multi-TB library just fine, with very fast searching and playlist creation capabilities.

AirSonic provides streaming on the go, with a "Random Album" list which is an amazing way to explore your library.

> I have terabytes of pirated music

That’s funny. I have much less music locally and that’s why I like listening to it over streaming services.

The cloud may have terabytes and terabytes of all kinds of music, but 99.99% of that does nothing for me.

The music I have purchased and curated locally is my collection and I know I like everything there. It’s a guaranteed 100% match.

I use cloud streaming only to discover new acts and albums, and then it’s right back to Plex.

but every new piece of music you had to have heard the first time.

Sure. But I’m not going to bother buying (or in worst case pirating) music before I know it’s worthwhile having in my curated collection.

I’m not using local stuff for discovering new music. That’s what’s the internet is for.

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.