What do you use for music? iTunes vs ????

I dislike Apple's iTunes, but I've had it for so long. I only use it as a player. I've tried others and they all suck. I mean seriously suck. I love the way iTunes categorizes and works. However, it is an over-bloated piece of crap and in many ways, I'd love to use something else. I just have not been able to find anything that works.

The reason I want to use something else is that I always have so many problems with it. I never ever buy music or anything from there, it's just a player. I'm on Windows, and no the Windows player is not acceptable. It's not even remotely acceptable as a player. I need something where I can very simply categorize music types and genres, that is intuitive and has play lists. Basically, there has to be a programmer out there that has created an iTunes-like player, but that is so much better to use, that is not complicated, and tied to Apple.

Let me know what you use for your player.

And, I'm not really interested in cloud solutions. I'm talking about a computer app, not phone or tablet, a real computer application that manages a large catalog of data. Think about very large amounts of lots of different types of music. Cloud wont work because it's too costly for me.

Thanks much. Appreciate any suggestions. Also, if you could, let me know what you like or don't like about what you use as compared to iTunes.

Edited to add: I know this sounds a little negative. It's not, I just am looking for something very specific and I'm trying to avoid the "just use the cloud" or whatever. I want a actual piece of software on my PC that manages my music really well.