Maybe I'm missing something but why don't more ppl just built their own (web-based?) media player and drop-in mp3s and mp4s...? It's not that difficult and is easily hosted on a server available anywhere behind a basic authenication gate. This solutions is esp. useful if you have any NAS setup.

What's the rationale for not building homebrew media players instead of railing against Spotify...?

I use https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome and it’s great