Although this article <b>is</b> very well written, informative and the Apple bashing is in most part correct — the music you have in the library can still be managed adequately. I am assuming that users have “consolidated” their files, which is the next mistake if you have also already payed up for Apple Music or whatever.
Albums/tracks can be managed manually (as it indeed says in the settings) and the storefront, radio and other bloat can be ignored. Enjoying your music can be as it was. Backing up your xml and itl (native iTunes library) is something that should be carried out frequently, assuming your iTunes library is kinda sacred to you.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but I want to touch on FLAC. This is for me, the only reason Apple users would want to find an alternative, but I realised even after using FLAC players, the playlists were not created as easily as in iTunes. For me the lack of home-sharing — (remember that??) and FLAC made me look elsewhere. After version 10 or so I noticed the lack of need for playlists but got into the habit of creating a playlist for every album I imported since the 1st version. This habit continued. I gave smart-playlists a go but found them incompatible with other services, i.e. DNLA and UPnP. iTunes generates m3u/m3u8 files which work very well.
For a little while I used Foobar2000 running on CrossOver. I found this the best all-round setup, but after a while it seemed to be taxing my RAM and making the Finder and other apps sluggish. Running on its own, it is great.
My main point is that iTunes can still do what we love and sure the days may be numbered for it, but as for v12.6 it is still doing what it should as long as you tell it who’s boss. That is why I do keep going back and currently have been staying put for a while.