For playing music and managing a considerable music collection, I highly recommend a terrific (free) program named
Jaangle if you are a serious music collector who gets great joy from multiple "organization" and presentation options, album art, artist bios and pictures, playing MP3 and FLAC, simple and advanced search, etc., etc.
I myself do NOT use Windows' Music Library functionality, nor do I use Windows Media Player for music. I generally use Winamp as my "external player" for playing music (and displaying album my high-quality 500x500 album art in a 500x500 window).
And... I also use
Jaangle, as my music collection organizer. It will do EVERYTHING you're asking of Music Library and much much much more. It has a built-in music/video player (which plays MP3, FLAC, and much else) or you can invoke an external player (e.g. Winamp) if you prefer. I myself don't use it for playing videos but it can.
But it's Jaangle's music collection organization and presentation options (e.g. 10 different sort sequence arrangements which all music collectors inevitably use at different times, multiple "themes" for display of artist/album/title, etc.), automatic retrieval of album reviews, artist bios and pictures, cover art (if you don't have your own), etc., that make this product such a treat.
I know... you're probably a long-time user of Windows functionality. But you sound like you don't like it, so you should at least consider Jaangle as a terrific alternative.