I've posted in the past, generally poking all you fellow DRM free lovers about how you manage your libraries and what apps you use, etc etc. So I figured I would post everything I do now, see any suggestions and possibly help some people. :)

Games:
Man, I miss some games. Thankfully my favorite games of all time, Mount & Blade Warband (BANNERLORD WHEN, TALEWORLDS!?!?), Kenshi, Dragon Age Origins, Kingdom Come Deliverance (and other games I like) are DRM free. As I've put a tight leash on my DRM free lifestyle, I can only play games available DRM free legally, and free games that aren't platforms. So I can play PlanetSide 2, but not Fortnite, since Epic bundles their store with a "free" game. That's mostly to stop me from being tempted to take free games or being swayed to eventually paying for DRM games again. These stores will constantly attempt to manipulate you into spending money. All of these tactics are to get you invested into their ecosystem and to feel like leaving would be a loss. Then "hey, cool games for sale, purchase purchase purchase purchase..." sinking you further and further. I know, I felt it when I deleted my steam. No thanks, keep your marketing and manipulation tactics. I have a bookmark where I check new releases on GOG, a folder of shortcuts to games I might like, and I have a wishlist of games I'll eventually get.

Games Launcher:
So I use this cool launcher with no tracking, no advertisements and all around no bullshit. Playnite. It's been pretty great. As I install my games and organize them manually (no GOG galaxy), it's nice to just have one shortcut for all my installed games. I encourage you to check Playnite out if you're looking for a games launcher with legit nothing else attached to it. It's essentially an .exe launcher with built in systems for organizing and metadata.

Music:
Most music sites allow direct downloads. Amazon for MP3's, Bandcamp for "hq" (limited artists), 7DigitalUS for "hq", Qobuz for "hq", Jamendo for free music (mostly classical and piano for me). Using these, I can find every single song I want. I'm not an audiofile, and after many tests with the gear I do have, I'm not convinced buying anything other than MP3 is even worth it. I'm sure $1,000's+ of audio equipment would give me better sound, but I doubt I'll ever buy anything like that. I have, however, bought the highest quality music files I could get... just in case. I also only typically buy individual songs, as paying for a full album just to listen to 3 songs is as stupid, to me, as buying 15 games you'll never play because they were $1 each on sale.

I use Musicbee to organize and play. Pretty awesome software with no advertisements or annoying shit. "It just works." xD

TV Shows & Movies:
Man is it hard to not put on my tricorn and eyepatch. This world of TV and Movies is so damn stream and subscription based... many shows I want are available in HD... but only on a streaming platform (muahahahaa $15/month forever!). Even if you would purchase, you only get DVD quality. Or like IASIP, after season 9 you just can't buy physical discs!? I mean what is this anti-consumer crap? And then when you look for other means of attaining, it's still the same shitty quality, 480p or 480p disguised as 720p. I remember when I started all this DRM free shit I bought Black Sails on DVD and thought "cool, one of my favorite shows is mine now." Yeah, until I saw the quality. It looked like shit! I learned the hard way, if it's not Blu-ray it will look like pixelated ass (usually). This is where I really need some help from you all. I know you can actually download on itunes, but it's only 720p. I'm sorry, but in my opinion, if there is a 1080p option out there, and when I purchase and download I can only get it in 720p, that's bullshit. Not to mention the file is unique to only play on itunes. Then you've got a lot of adult swim shows that are completely unavailable. pffffffffffffffffffffffft.

I use Emby, it works pretty good. I would have used Plex but now they seem to be forcing people down a path that I don't want. Emby is just straight up and easy to use without any added bullshit unless you want to add it. At least many shows are available in blu-ray, it's only specific and older shows I'm having trouble finding. You'd think these companies would just let you buy the videos and download them. I guess that would be too easy and convenient. For any new shows that come out, since I don't pay for any subscription models, I just buy the episodes on VUDU. No way around paying twice, unless I want to wait 6+ months to buy a Blu-ray and can avoid spoilers. I would use Google to watch new episodes, but they constantly have pop-ups for me to "trial" different services, which is them hoping for a misclick or to get someone paying who doesn't monitor their finances.

So I just got me a 6tb, put all my media on it. My games EXE's are packed up and organized on it, and I'll just install a game whenever I get a feeling to play it on my 500gb nvme. I'll some day buy 2 12-16tb's and raid them for security, but that will be a while, and frankly I don't need it as I still have 4 tb's free of my 6tb. Managing 1 pc is enough for me and my OCD ways, so I have my gaming pc in the front room and hooked to the TV. It acts as a server and my gaming rig. It's my all-in-one. :)

How does Plex's live TV stack up to Pluto TV, by the way? Infintismally better, or...?

After reading about their forced tv lineup or whatever, I just haven't even used it at all, so I wouldn't know. I do really like Pluto TV though, good for noise and occasionally a decent episode/show/movie is available.

I stick with single player offline games myself, which seems to mean avoiding a huge amount of hassle with "anti-cheat" programs wanting to take over my system. :) There's certainly fewer games available when you set yourself a DRM-free restriction, but GOG has nearly 2,000 which should be more than enough for anyone in their lifetime.

Add to that, older games with mods to extend their lifespan, and I'd ask - who really needs AAA DRM-pushers nowadays? Um...what's wrong with Start Menu? It's taken a while for commercial music sites to drop their DRM (remember Microsoft's "Plays for Sure"? *snort*). However I decided to stop buying from any major music or video publisher following the UK blockage of Pirate Bay back in 2012 (and I've been boycotting Sony since their rootkit scandal in 2005). Heh, compared to music sites, video sites have done the exact opposite. I've boycotted Blu-Ray due to the DRM on that (it still doesn't seem possible to get a player that can handle multiple BR regions, only DVD) and my only HD content is TV broadcasts I've recorded on a PVR (hacked to remove encryption). But I spend most of my time on games (at 2560x1600) so I don't see that as any big loss.

Does it have the same functionality as Playnite?

Aside from providing a sortable list of shortcuts, what other functionality do you need?

Why do you need a sortable list of shortcuts? Isn't typing commands in MS DOS good enough for you? Why do you need a computer? Etc. etc.

Yep, I was never a AAA snob, but I am surely enjoying some games I would usually pass over when I was only on steam.

I like Playnite because all the games I have installed would fill my taskbar. I don't use Windows 10's start menu or the shortcuts in it, just the taskbar.

You should try MakeMKV. It's great for ripping blu-rays and the video quality is awesome. With Emby I'm slowly but surely creating my own master library for everything media. I think they even support launching games, going to have to try that out, at least for the controller capable games.

lol Yeah that comic is how I feel with some shows, especially adult swim where it can literally be the only option.

Sarcasm aside, sortable Start Menu Shortcuts fix a lot of issues with stores & clients constantly listing games in a series out of order. Eg, looking through my GOG account, Avadon 2, Avernum 2, Baldurs Gate 2 are all listed before 1, Deus Ex 3 comes before Deus Ex, the Blackwell Quintology are ordered 3,4,5,1,2, the DROD, Thief and Sam & Max Series games are all ordered 2,3,1, the Elder Scrolls are ordered 3,4,1,2, etc. Sometimes the logical chronological order of a game series isn't necessarily the "strict" alphabetical order of stores or clients. In fact looking at the screenshot on Playnite's Home Page, the very same Blackwell series mentioned above are still mis-ordered (3,4,1,2). A simple drag-drop of shortcuts (or even arranging them into series / genres based on sub-folders) makes it look 10x better, especially with stuff like Classic Shell / Open Shell + Smoked Glass theme still putting a lot of clients (and Windows 10 itself) to shame on the aesthetic side.

Playnite has a sorting name field (same for Launchbox, and even Galaxy2 has it).
You mentioned sorting! Can you (auto)sort your games in start menu by release date? Or played state? Or just any aspect? And what about filtering?

Start Menu sorting is by name only, though you can alter shortcut names to force a particular order (e.g. including a numeric prefix for games that form a series). I would have thought it would make more sense (and be more convenient) to have games in a predictable (and fixed) position to allow for quick selection, than to have alternative sorting options of questionable utility (why should release date be of relevance?).

On the other hand, I forgot that Win7+ gimped the Start Menu (going from a full list spanning multiple columns if needed to a single column scrollable list showing far fewer entries). Classic Shell should fix that though.

Obviously if you want client features like play-time tracking, then install a client. That stuff doesn't bother me so I don't. I've never arbitrarily thought "Today I want to play a game, any game that's specifically an FPS that just happened to be released on Dec 10th 1992 but I don't know what the name of the game is" vs "I think I'll play Doom" so although ultra-flexible meta-data database sorting has its use, it's more a marketing point than how I'd actually use it. I have a ton of older disc-based games not available "digitally" that would never show up on auto-integration that I would need to add manually one by one (vs just using shortcut links) and particularly for older games for which igdb.com metadata is lacking, meaning whatever I did search for would be missing a chunk of games anyway and the only time I'd get to play them would be to look for them anyway.

And that's ignoring the laughably inaccurate igdb based metadata in the first place (adventure / strategy hybrid Dune 1992 is not a "beat 'em up" like Double Dragon or "hack & slash" like Diablo 2 by literally any measure nor is Lemmings 2 a "sports" game like NBA nor is Age of Empires an "adventure" game like Grim Fandango, etc). They're so wildly incorrect / vague that filtering based on that is worse than not filtering at all, relying on memory by glancing at the titles or arranging shortcuts into actually meaningful genre based sub-folders then just backup the folder of .lnk files vs spending an extra +5,000 clicks manually adding every game to a 3rd party client, filling in missing / incorrect metadata, etc, so that the magical filtering / sorting actually works as claimed...

When it comes to Movies and TV I prefer just buying it via physical media.

Music is so free at this point with Youtube and Spotify and Radio that I just use these methods.

I try to play with both physical and digital games.

I'm not trying to convince you. You like your start menu, I like Launchbox/Collectorz. There's nothing wrong with my meta data, and my preferred use has nothing to do with marketing.